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January 29th [1857] Tolstoy left Moscow and traveled by mail post to Warsaw and from Warsaw by rail to Paris, where he arrived on February 21 [1857].
There turgenev awaited him. As early as January 23rd the latter wrote to Druzhinin:
Tolstoy writes that he intends coming over here, and
then going in the spring from here to Italy. Tell him to
make haste, if he wishes to find me. Anyhow, I will
write to him myself. Judging from his letters, I see
that he is going through most beneficial changes, and I
am rejoicing at it like an "old nurse". I have read his
"A Russian Landowner" which pleased me very much by its
frankness and almost full freedom of conviction; I say
"almost", because in the way he states the problem to
himself lies (perhaps unknown to him) a certain
prejudice. The essential moral impression of the tale (I
don't speak of the artistic one) is this, that until
serfdom ceases to exist, there would be no possibility of
rapprochement and mutual understanding in spite of the
most disinterested, honest desire to meet, and this
impression is good and true; but side by side with it
runs another secondary impression -- namely, that on the
whole, teaching the peasant or improving his position is
useless, and I cannot agree with this impression. But
his mastery of the language, of the tale, of
characteristics is very great.
After meeting Tolstoy, Turgenev wrote to Polonskiy:
Tolstoy is here. A change for the better has taken
place in him, and a very considerable one.
This man will go far and will leave a deep trail
after him.
In a letter to Kalbasin dated March 8, 1857, from Paris, Turgenev said:
I very often see Tolstoy here, and I had the other
day a very nice letter from Nekrasov dated from Rome.
But I cannot become intimate with Tolstoy, we take
such different views.
This is Tolstoy's estimate at that time of Turgenev and Nekrasov, whom Tolstoy found in Paris, as quoted by Botkin in his letter to Druzhinin of March 8, 1857.
Tolstoy writes thus about his interview with him:
They are both roaming in a sort of darkness, they
are dejected and complain of life, do nothing, and
apparently both feel the weight of their mutual
relations.
Turgenev writes that Nekrasov suddenly went away again to Rome. Tolstoy's letter is only a page but full of vitality and freshness. Germany interests him very much and he intends to study that country more fully by-and-by. In a month's time he starts for Rome. [From papers by Druzhinin, "Twenty-five Years' Manual", St. Petersburg, 1884.
This correspondence shows that the relations between Tolstoy and Turgenev were always unsatisfactory, and that with all their efforts, they could not become cordial friends.
In March, Tolstoy and Turgenev made a journey to Dijon and spent a few days together there. While there, Tolstoy wrote the tale about the musician Albert. Then they came back to Paris, where Tolstoy witnessed an execution which he described in his "Confession," and which made an indelible impression upon him, of which he made a brief entry in his diary:
6th April 1857: I rose before seven and went to see
an execution. A stout, white, health neck and breast:
he kissed the Gospel and then--death. What a senseless
thing! It made a strong impression, which has not been
in vain. I am not a political man. Morality and Art I
know that I love and can...The guillotine for a long time
prevented me from sleeping, forcing me to look round.
This is what he says on the subject in "How I Came to Believe":
thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of a public
execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious
belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the
body and heard the sound with which they fell separately
into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with
my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all
established things, nor of progress, could justify such
an act; and that if all the men in the world from the day
of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing
necessary, it was not so, it was an evil thing. and
that, therefore, I must judge of what was right and
necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress,
but what I felt to be true in my heart.
Tolstoy put off his journey to Rome till the autumn, and in the spring set out from Paris for Geneva, from which place he writes to his aunt Tatyana:
I have passed a month and a half in Paris, and so
pleasantly that I say to myself every day that I did well
to come abroad. I have gone very little either into
society or the literary world, or the world of cafes and
public entertainments, but nevertheless, I have found so
much here that is new and interesting to me that every
day, when I go to bed, I say to myself: "what a pity it
is the day has passed so quickly!" I have not even had
time to work as I intended.
Poor Turgenev is very ill physically and still more
so morally. His unfortunate connection with Madame V.
and her daughter keeps him here in a climate which is
very bad for him, and it is piteous to see him. I should
never have thought he could so love!
From Geneva, Tolstoy went on foot to Piedmont with botkin and Druzhinin, who had come there; after that he settled down on the banks of Lake Geneva at the little village of Clarens, from which he wrote an enthusiastic letter to his Aunt Tatyana:
I have just received your letter, dear Aunt, which
has found me, as you must know by my last letter, in the
neighborhood of Geneva, at Clarens, in the same village
as that in which rousseau's Julie lived....I will not
attempt to describe the beauty of the country, especially
at the present time, when all is in leaf and flower; I
will merely tell you that it is literally impossible to
tear oneself away from this lake and these shores, and
that I pass most of my time in gazing and admiring as I
walk about, or else merely as I sit by the window in my
room. I do not cease to congratulate myself on the idea
I had of leaving Paris and coming to pass the spring
here, although it brought upon me your reproach of
inconsistency. I am really happy, and I begin to feel
the advantages of having been born with a sliver spoon in
my mouth.
There is here a charming society of Russians --
Pushkins, Karamzins, and Meshcherskiys; and all, God
knows why, have taken affectionately to me. I feel this
and the month I have passed here so pleasantly, and I am
so well and hearty that I am quite in low spirits at the
thought of leaving.
Besides these friends in the neighborhood of Geneva, there lived at that time in the village Baucage, near the lake, Tolstoy's friend, the Countess A. A. Tolstaya, who was maid of honor to the grand duchess Marya Nikolayevna, who there gave birth to a son Count Stroganov. It was a very great pleasure to Tolstoy to visit them.
He spend about two months at Clarens and resolved to continue his journey on foot. Having made the acquaintance of a Russian family there, he invited one of them, a boy named Sasha, of the age of ten, to go up the mountains with him. At first they were to have walked to Friburg, crossing the gorge Jaman, but after having crossed it, they changed their minds and turned in the direction of the Chateau d'Oex, from which they proceeded to Thun by the mail post.
among the unpublished manuscripts of Tolstoy are his notes of this journey, from which a few descriptions of Swiss landscape may be quoted. He first of all went by steamer from Clarens to Montreux.
15th May 1857. the weather was clear, the light
blue and brilliantly dark blue Leman, spotted white and
black with sails and boats, shone before our eyes almost
on three sides of us; behind Geneva, some way from the
bright lake, the hot atmosphere trembled and darkened; on
the opposite shore the green Savoy mountains rose
abruptly, with little white houses at their base and with
jagged rocks, one of which looked like an enormous white
woman in an ancient costume. To the left, near the red
vines in the dark-green thicket of fruit trees, was
distinctly seen Montreux with its graceful church
standing half-way down the slope, Villeneuve on the Vevey
shore with the iron roofs of its houses brightly shining
in the midday sun, the mysterious cleft of the Vallais
with its mountains heaped one upon another, the white Col
de Chillon over the water near Vevey, and the much-
belauded little island artificially yet beautifully
placed in front of villeneuve. The lake was slightly
rippled, the sun beat down perpendicularly upon its blue
surface, and the sails, scattered about the lake,
appeared motionless.
It is wonderful how, having lived in Clarens two
months, still each time, when in the morning and still
more in the evening after dinner I open the shutters of
the windows already in the shade and look out on the lake
and the distant blue mountains reflected in it, their
beauty blinds me and startles me with a thrill. I
immediately wish to love and even feel the love of others
for myself, and regret the past, hope for the future, and
feel it become a joy to be alive. I desire to live long,
very long, and the thought of death fills me with a
childish, poetic awe. Sometimes, sitting alone in the
shady little garden and gazing, as I constantly do, on
these shores and this lake, I even feel, as it were, the
physical impression of their beauty pouring into my soul
through my eyes.
Again, as they climbed up the mountains:
Above us the wood birds were pouring out their songs
such as are not heard on the lake. Here one feels the
smell of the damp of the forest and of felled pine trees.
The walk was so pleasant that we were loath to hurry on.
suddenly we were struck by a curious, delightful spring
smell. Sasha ran into the wood and gathered some cherry
blossom, but it was almost scentless. On both sides were
seen green trees and shrubs without bloom. The sweet
overpowering odor kept on increasing. After we had
advanced a hundred yards, the shrubs opened to the right
and an immense sloping valley, flecked with white and
green, with a few cottages over it, was disclosed before
our eyes. Sasha ran to the meadow to gather white
narcissus with both hands, and brought me an enormous
bouquet, with a very strong scent, but, with the love of
destruction natural to children, he ran back to trample
and tear the tender and beautiful young succulent flowers
which gave him so much pleasure.
They passed the night at Avants. After the ascent, Tolstoy wrote the following reflections:
16/28 May [1857]: what I was told is true -- the
higher you ascend the mountains, the easier it is to
advance. We had already been walking more than an hour
and neither of us felt either the weight of his bags or
any fatigue. Although we did not yet see the sun, it
threw its rays over us on to the opposite height,
touching on its way a few peaks and pines on the horizon.
The torrents beneath were all audible where we stood,
close to us only snow water soaked through the soil, and
at a turning of the road, we again saw the Lake Valle at
an appalling depth beneath us. The base of the Savoy
mountains was completely blue, like the lake, only
darker; the summits, lighted by the sun, were throughout
of a pale pink. There were more snow-clad peaks, which
seemed higher and of a more varied shape. Sails and
boats like scarcely visible spots were seen on the lake.
It was a beautiful sight, beautiful beyond measure, but
this is not Nature, although it is something good. I do
not like what are called glorious and magnificent views -
- somehow they are cold.
...I like Nature when it surrounds me on all sides,
and then unfolds in infinite distance -- but still when
I am myself in it. I like it when the warm air is first
all about me and then recedes in volume into infinite
distance; when those same tender leaves of grass which I
crush as I sit on them give their greenness to boundless
meadows; when those same leaves which, stirred by the
wind, move the shadows about my face, give their hue to
the distant wood; when the very air you breathe makes the
dark blue of the limitless sky; when you are not
rejoicing and revelling in the inanimate Nature alone;
when round about you buzz and dance myriads of insects,
lady-birds crawl, and birds are pouring out their songs.
But this is a bare, cold, desolate, gray little
plateau, and somewhere there something veiled with the
mist of distance. But this something is so far off that
I do not feel the chief delight of Nature -- do not feel
myself a part of this infinite and beautiful distance.
I have nothing to do with this distance.
Continuing his journey, in July [1857] Tolstoy reached Lucerene, from which he wrote to his aunt:
"Lucerne, July 8 [1857]: I think I have told you,
dear Aunt, that I have left Clarens with the intention of
undertaking rather a long journey through the north of
Switzerland, along the Rhine, and from Holland to
England. From there I intend again passing through
France and Paris, and in August making a short stay at
Rome and Naples. If I can stand the sea crossings which
I shall encounter in going from The Hague to London, I
think of returning by the Mediterranean, Constantinople,
the Black Sea, and Odessa. But all these are plans which
I shall perhaps not carry out owing to my changeable
disposition, with which you, my dear Aunt, justly
reproach me. I have arrived at Lucerne. It is a town in
the north of Switzerland, not far from the rhine, and I
am already postponing my departure, so as to remain a few
days in this delicious little town....I am again all
alone, and I will confess to you that very often this
solitude is painful to me, as the acquaintances one makes
in hotels and trains are not a resource; yet this
isolation has at least the advantage of prompting me to
work. I am working a little, but it advances badly, as
it usually does in summer.
During his stay at Lucerne, he had an adventure, which he describes in "The memoirs of Prince Nekhludov". The tale referred to the year 1857 and is therefore connected with his own journey.
In this tale, as we know, the lovely description of Swiss nature is interrupted by expressions of indignation at the way in which its harmony is spoiled in order to please the well-to-do tourists, chiefly English.
What strikes him especially is the contrast between the dull respectability of the "table d'hote" and the wild, but soft and exhilarating beauty of the lake. The feeling is intensified in him when he hears the song of a street singer with a harp. As if by magic, this song attracts general attention and strikes a chord in his soul to which he is unable to give tone.
All the confused and involuntary impressions of life
suddenly received meaning and charm for me, as though a
fresh and fragrant flower had bloomed in my soul.
Instead of the fatigue, distraction, and indifference for
everything in the world which I had felt but a minute
before, I suddenly was conscious of a need of love, a
fullness of hope, and a joy of life, which I could not
account for. "What is there to wish, what to desire?"
I uttered involuntarily. "Here it is -- you are on all
sides surrounded by beauty and poetry. Inhale it in
broad, full draughts with all the strength you have!
Enjoy yourself! What else do you require? All is yours,
all the bliss."
The same dull, respectable English surround this beautiful flower of poetry like a black frame.
The singer finished and held out his hat beneath the windows of a grand hotel, on the veranda of which stood a crowd of smartly dressed listeners, who non of them gave him anything.
Amazed at the stony indifference of these people, Tolstoy ran after the musician and invited him to the hotel to partake of a bottle of wine. This defiant action created a sensation in the hotel, but that was precisely what he wanted. His object was to wound those self-satisfied tourists; he wanted to express his indignation at their heartlessness. However, the sensation passed away and was almost forgotten, leaving the author with a bitter feeling against the injustice of men and their incapacity to understand the highest happiness, the simple, humane, and at the same time sympathetic attitude toward nature.
How could you, children of a free, humane nation,
you Christians, you, simply men, even, answer with
coldness and ridicule to a pure enjoyment afforded you by
an unfortunate mendicant? But no; there are refuges for
beggars in your country. There are not beggars, there
must not be, and there must not be the feeling of
compassion upon which beggars depend.
But he labored, gave you pleasure; he implored
you to give him something of your superabundance for his
labor, which you made use of, and then you looked down at
him with a cold smile from your high, shining palaces, as
at a curiosity, and among hundreds of you, happy and rich
people, there was not found one man or woman to throw
anything to him! Put to shame, he walked away from you -
- and the senseless crowd pursued and insulted with its
laughter, not you, but him, because you are cold, cruel,
and dishonest; because you stole enjoyment from him,
which he had afforded you, they offended him.
On the 7th of July 1857, an itinerant singer for
half an hour sang songs and played the guitar in Lucerne
in front of the Schweizerhof, where the richest people
stop. About one hundred persons listened to him. The
singer three times asked all to give him something. Not
one person gave him anything, and a great many laughed at
him.
This is not fiction but a positive fact, which those
who wish may find out from the permanent inmates of
Schweizerhof, and by looking up in the newspapers who the
foreigners were on the 7th of July stopped at the
Schweizerhof.
This is an occurrence which the historians of our
time ought to note down with fiery, indelible letters.
An outcry of astonishment broke forth from his heart in the presence of the riddle of the tangled chain of men's relations to each other and their petty feelings as compared with the harmonious grandeur of sovereign nature. The author expressed his feelings in a pathetic artistic form and thus finished his tale:
What an unfortunate, miserable being is man with his
need of positive solutions, cast into this eternally
moving, endless ocean of good and evil, of facts, of
reflections and contradictions! Men have been struggling
and laboring for ages to put the good all on one side and
the evil on the other. Ages pass, and no matter what the
unprejudiced mind may have added to the scales of good
and evil, there is always the same equilibrium, and on
each side there is just as much good as evil.
If man could only learn not to judge, not to
conclude sharply and positively, and not to give answers
to questions put before him only that they might always
remain questions! If he only understood that every idea
is both just and false! False -- on account of its one-
sidedness, on account of the impossibility of man's
embracing the whole truth; and just -- as an expression
of one side of human tendencies. They have made
subdivisions for themselves in this eternally moving,
endless, endlessly mixed chaos of good and evil; they
have drawn imaginary lines on this sea, and now they are
waiting for this sea to be parted asunder, as though
there were not millions of other subdivisions from an
entirely different point of view in another plane. It is
true -- these new subdivisions are worked out by the
ages, but millions of these ages have passed and will
pass yet.
Civilization is good, barbarism evil; freedom is
good, enslavement evil. It is this imaginary knowledge
which destroys the instinctive, most blissful primitive
demands of good in human nature. And who will define to
me what freedom is, what despotism, what civilization,
what barbarism? And where are the limits of the one and
of the other? In whose soul is this measure of good and
evil so imperturbable that he can measure with it this
fleeting medley of facts? Whose mind is so large as to
embrace and weigh all the facts even of the immovable
past? And who has seen a condition such that good and
evil did not exist side by side in it? And how do I know
but what I see more of the one that of the other only
because I do not stand in the proper place? and who is
able so completely to tear his mind away from life, even
for a moment, as to take an independent bird's-eye view
of it?
There is one, but one sinless leader, the Universal
Spirit, who penetrates us all as he does one and each
separately, who imparts to each the tendency toward that
which is right; that same Spirit who orders the tree to
grow toward the sun, orders the flower to cast seeds in
the autumn, and orders us to hold together unconsciously.
This one, sinless blissful voice is drowned by the
boisterous hurry of growing civilization. Who is the
greater man and the greater barbarian -- the lord, who
upon seeing the singer's soiled garment angrily rushed
away from the table, who did not give him for his labor
one-millionth of his worldly goods, and who now, well-fed
and sitting in a lighted, comfortable room, calmly judges
of the affairs of China, finding all the murders
committed there justified, or the little singer, who,
risking imprisonment, with a franc in his pocket, has for
twenty years harmlessly wandered through mountains and
valleys, bringing consolation to people with his singing,
who has been insulted, who today was almost kicked out,
and who then, there, hungry, humiliated, went away to
sleep somewhere on rotting straw?
Just then I heard in the town, amid the dead silence
of the night, far, far away, the guitar and the voice of
the little man.
No, I involuntarily said to myself, you have no
right to pity him and to be indignant at the lord's well
being. Who has weighed the internal happiness which lies
in the soul of each of these men? He is sitting
somewhere on a dirty threshold, looking into the
gleaming, moonlit heaven, and joyfully singing in the
soft, fragrant night; in his heart there is no reproach,
no malice, no regret. And who knows what is going on now
in the souls of all these people, behind these rich, high
walls? Who knows whether there is in all of them as much
careless, humble joy of life and harmony with the world
as lives in the soul of this little man?
Endless is the mercy and all-wisdom of Him who has
permitted and has commanded all these contradictions to
exist. Only to you, insignificant worm, who are boldly,
unlawfully trying to penetrate His laws, His intentions,
only to you do they appear as contradictions. He looks
calmly down from His bright, immeasurable height and
enjoys the endless harmony in which you all with your
contradictions are endlessly moving. In your pride you
thought you could tear yourself away from the universal
law. No, even you, with your petty little indignation at
the waiters, even you have responded to the harmonious
necessity of the endless and the eternal.
From Lucerne Tolstoy continued his journey up the Rhine, Schaffhausen, Baden, Stuttgart, Frankfort, and Berlin.
On August 8th [1857] he was in Stettin, and from there arrived in St. Petersburg by boat on August 11th (July 30th, O.S.).
He remained in St. Petersburg a week, visited the circle of "The Contemporary", called on Nekrasov and read to him his tale "Lucerne", which was printed in the September number of "The Contemporary" in 1857. On August 6th he left for Moscow and then went straight on to tula.
Soon after his arrival at Yasnaya Polyana he plunged into business in connection with his estate.
In his diary of that period the following entry is found:
This is how during my journey I divided my day: I
put, first of all, literary work, then family duties,
then the estates; but the estates I must leave in the
hands of the steward as much as possible; but I must
educate and improve him, and I must only spend two
thousand rubles, the rest should be used in the interests
of the peasants. My great stumbling block is the vanity
of Liberalism. One should live for oneself and a good
deed a day is sufficient.
A little later he wrote:
Self-abnegation does not consist in saying, "Take
from me what you like"; but in laboring and thinking in
concert with others, so as to give oneself to them.
August [1857] he devoted to reading and studied two remarkable subjects, Homer's "Iliad" and the Gospels. Both produced a strong impression upon him.
"I have finished reading the inexpressibly beautiful conclusion of the `Iliad'. Thus he expresses himself, and the beauty of both these subjects makes him regret that there is no connection between them. "How could Homer fail to know that the only good is love?" he exclaims, mentally comparing these two books. And he himself answers: "He knew of no revelation -- there is no better explanation."
In the middle of October [1857], Tolstoy moved to Moscow, together with his eldest brother Nikolay and his sister Marie. His diary shows that he arrived there on the 17th. On October 23 [1857], he left that city for St. Petersburg, intending to stay there a few days.
His tale "Lucerne" (Memoirs of Prince Nekhludov), printed in "The Contemporary", was not appreciated by the critics and therefore made no impression.
The silence of the critics gives striking and obvious proof how narrow-minded, short-sighted, and incapable they were. On the whole, from 1857 up to 1861, according to the opinion of Zelinskiy, who published a collection of critical essays on Tolstoy, there were no criticisms on Tolstoy's works in spite of the fact that during that time he printed such remarkable works as "Youth," "Lucerne," "Albert," "Three Deaths," and "Family Happiness."
Tolstoy was aware of the indifference of the critics, and after his return from St. Petersburg in October 1857, he wrote in his diary:
St. Petersburg at first grieved and then put me
right. My reputation has fallen or just lingers, and I
have been much grieved inwardly; but now I am at peace.
I know that I have got something to say, and the power of
saying it strongly; as for the rest, the public may say
what it likes. But it is necessary to work
conscientiously, to lay out all one's power, then...let
them spit on the altar.
Tolstoy returned to Moscow on October 30 [1857]. During his stay there, he very often saw Fet, who in his Reminiscences thus described his visits:
One evening while were taking tea, Tolstoy appeared
quite unexpectedly and informed us that they, the
Tolstoys, i.e., his elder brother Nikolay and his sister
Countess Marie, had all three settled in the furnished
rooms of Verighin, in Pyatnitskiy Street. Before long we
all became intimate.
I don't know how the Tolstoy brothers, Nikolay and
Lev, became acquainted with S. Gromeka; it occurred
probably in our house. All three very soon became great
friends, being all of them enthusiastic sportsmen. [A.
Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p. 214]
The Moscow life of Tolstoy at this period (the end of the 1850s) had no remarkable feature. At this time his physical nature was in full glow and strength and drew him in the direction of ambitious enterprises, amusements, and society life in general.
Fet relates that sometimes in the evening they had concerts in which Countess Marie Tolstaya joined, herself a pianoforte player and a lover of music. Sometimes she would arrive accompanied by Lev and Nikolay, sometimes by the latter only, who would say, "Lev has put on his evening suit again and gone to a ball." [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p. 216]
Fet gives the following account of these recreations:
I.P. Borisov had known Tolstoy in the Caucasus, and
being himself far superior to the average man, he could
not, from their first meeting in hour house, resist the
influence of that giant. But at that time, Tolstoy's
love for gaiety was more striking, and when he saw him
going out for a walk in his new coat with a gray beaver
collar, his dark curly hair showing under a fashionable
hat worn on one side, with a smart cane in hand, Borisov
quoted these words from a popular song: "He leans on his
stick, and he boasts that it is made of hazel."
Gymnastics were very popular with the fashionable
young people at that time, the favorite exercise being
that of jumping over a wooden horse.
If anyone desired to get hold of Tolstoy between one
and two in the afternoon, he had to go to the gymnasium
hall at the Great Dmitrovka. It was interesting to watch
how Tolstoy, in his tights, eagerly tried to jump over
the horse without catching the leather cone stuffed with
wool and placed on the horse's back. No wonder that the
active, energetic nature of a young man of twenty-nine
demanded such violent exercise, but it was strange to see
next to him old men with bald heads and protruding
stomachs. One young man would wait for his turn and
every time run and touch the back of the horse with his
chest, then quietly go aside, giving way to the next one.
[A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p216]
In the beginning of January 1858, Countess Aleksandra Alekseyevna Tolstaya, a friend of Tolstoy in his youth, paid a visit to Moscow. He saw her off to Klin by the Nikolayevskiy railway, and then went to stay at the house of the Princess Volkonskaya, whose name was introduced in the chapter of Tolstoy's forefathers on his mother's side. This Princess Volkonskaya was the cousin of Tolstoy's mother; she used to pay long occasional visits at Yasnaya Polyana, and she was able to tell Tolstoy many things of great interest about his father and mother.
Tolstoy cherished a most pleasant remembrance of this visit; it was during his stay that he wrote the tale "Three Deaths".
The idea of death began seriously to absorb his attention, and, as usual, his desire was to make the solution of the great problem consist in a harmony of the human soul with nature. Any divergence from this solution involves unutterable suffering; its attainment, eternal good; "the sting" of death therefore then disappears.
He returned to Yasnaya Polyana in February [1858]. Then he went again to Moscow, and in March to St. Petersburg for a fortnight. In April he again returned to Yasnaya Polyana, and he remained there the whole summer. During this period, Tolstoy devoted much of his time to music, and in Moscow, in association with Botkin, Perfilev, Mortier, and others, founded a Musical Association. Madame Kareyevskaya lent her hall for the concerts got up by this association, which eventually resolved itself into the Conservatoir of Moscow. In the same year, while in Moscow, Tolstoy became very intimate with the family of S. T. Aksakov, the elder.
Springtime generally exhilarated Tolstoy. The influx of energy which he experienced is well described in a letter to his aunt, A. A. Tolstaya, written in 1858.
Auntie, it is spring....For good people it is very
good to be alive on earth; even for such as me it is
sometimes good. In nature, in the air, in everything --
hope, future, and exquisite future...sometimes one is
mistaken and thinks that it is not only for nature that
a future and happiness wait but also for oneself, and
then one feels happy. I am now in such a state, and with
the egotism peculiar to me, I hasten to write to you
about things interesting only to myself. I very well
know when I bethink myself that I am an old frozen-out
potato, boiled with sauce into the bargain; but spring so
acts upon me that I sometimes catch myself in the full
swing of visions that I am a plant which, together with
others, has only just opened and will peacefully, simply,
and joyously grow in God's world. Accordingly at these
times, there takes place such an inner elaboration -- a
purifying and an ordering of which no one who has not
experienced this feeling can form any idea. All the old
-- away! All worldly conventionalities, all laziness,
all egotism, all vices, all confused, indefinite
attachments, all regrets, even repentance -- all this,
away! ... give place to a wonderful little flower which
is budding and growing along with spring...
This letter is rather long but very interesting. It would, in fact, be interesting for its close alone, at which Tolstoy makes the following request:
Goodby, dear Auntie, do not be angry with me for
this nonsense, and answer me with wise words imbued with
kindness -- and Christian kindness. I have long ago
wished to write to you that it is more convenient for you
to write in French, and for me feminine thought is more
comprehensible in French.
During this spring, Fet and his wife, while on their way through Moscow to their country abode, paid a visit to Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana.
In his Reminiscences, Fet thus described this visit, giving at the same time an interesting notice of Tolstoy's aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya:
Having bought a warm and comfortable kibitka
[Kirghiz tent] covered with matting, we started, in
company with Mariushka (idealized by Tolstoy in his
"Family Happiness"), by mail post for Mtsensk. Nobody
dreamed of a railway at that time; as to the bare
telegraph posts along the roads, people said the wire
would be first attached and after that freedom for the
serfs will be sent down the wire from St. Petersburg. By
this time we were on such good terms with Tolstoy that it
would have been a great deprivation to us not to call on
him and stay for a day at Yasnaya Polyana to rest a
little. There we were introduced to the charming old
lady, Tolstoy's aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya,
who received us with that old-fashioned hospitality which
at once makes the entrance under a new roof so pleasant.
Tatyana Aleksandrovna was not absorbed in the things of
the past but fully shared the life of the present.
She mentioned that Seryozhenka Tolstoy had gone to
his house at Pirogovo and Nokolanka might yet stay on for
a while in Moscow with Mashenka, but Lyovochka's friend
D., she said, came in the other day and complained of his
wife's neuralgia. In any difficulties she always used to
consult Lyovochka and was quite satisfied with his
explanations. Thus, driving in the autumn with him to
Tula, looking out of the carriage window, she suddenly
asked, "Mon cher Leon, how is it people write their
letters by telegraph?" "I had," said Tolstoy, "to
explain as simply as possible the action of a telegraph
instrument similarly arranged at both ends of the wire,
and as I was concluding, I heard her say, `Oui, oui, je
comprends, mon cher.'"
Having kept her eyes fixed on the wire for more than
half an hour, she at last asked, "Mon cher Leon, how can
this be? For a whole half-hour I have not seen a single
letter pass along the telegraph?"
"Sometimes," relates Tolstoy, "we used to sit at
home with my aunt for a whole month without seeing any
one, and suddenly, while serving the soup, she would
begin, `But do you know, dear Leo, they say ---'"
The long autumn and winter evenings have remained
for me as a wonderful recollection. To these evenings I
owe my best thoughts and best impulses of my soul. I sit
in an armchair reading, thinking, and at times listening
to her conversation with Natalya Petrovna or Dunechka the
maid, which was always good and kind; I exchange a few
words with her and again sit and read and think. This
wonderful armchair still stands in my home, though it is
not what it was, and another couch on which slept the
kind old woman Natalya Petrovna, who lived with her, not
for her sake but because she had nowhere else to live.
Between the windows under the looking glass was her small
writing table, with little china jars and a small vase,
in which were held the sweets, cakes, and dates, to which
she treated me. By the window tow armchairs, and to the
right of the door a comfortable embroidered armchair, on
which she liked me to sit of an evening.
The chief delight of this life was the absence of
material worry, the affectionate terms on which we all
were, in the strong mutual attachment free from all doubt
and misgiving by which close kinsfolk and household were
bound together, and the consciousness of the flight of
time.
Indeed, I was truly happy when seated in that
armchair. After leading a bad life at Tula, playing
cards with the neighbors, after the gypsy singers, as
well as my shooting and hunting -- silly vanity -- I
would return home, go to her (my aunt) by old habit and
we would kiss each other's hands, I -- her dear,
energetic hand; she -- my impure, vicious hand; and
having greeted each one in French, also by old habit, one
would exchange a joke with Natalya Petrovna and seat
oneself in the cozy armchair. She (my aunt) knows all I
have been doing, regrets it, but never reproaches me,
always treats me with the same love and affection.
Seated in my armchair, I read and meditate, and I listen
to her conversation with Natalya Petrovna. They either
recall old times, or play at Patience, or make
prognostics, or joke about something, and both old ladies
laugh -- especially auntie, with her dear, childlike
laugh, which I can hear at this moment. I tell them how
the wife of an acquaintance ha been unfaithful to her
husband, adding that the husband must have been glad to
have got rid of her. And suddenly auntie, who has just
been talking with Natalya Petrovna about an excrescence
of wax droppings on a candle foreshadowing a guest,
raises her eyebrows and says, as a thing long settled in
her soul, that a husband should not feel thus, because he
would quite ruin his wife. Then she tells me about a
drama among the servants, of which Dunechka has told her.
Then she reads out a letter from my sister Mashenka, whom
she loves, if not more, at least as much as myself, and
speaks about her husband, her own nephew, without
condemnation, yet grieving over the suffering he has
caused Mashenka. Then I again read, and she examines her
little collection of sundries -- all souvenirs.
But the chief feature of her life which
involuntarily insinuated itself into me was her
wonderful, universal kindness to everyone without
exception. I try to recall any one case when she got
angry or said a rough word or condemned anybody, and I am
unable to do so. I cannot call to mind one such word
during thirty years. She spoke well of another aunt of
ours who had cruelly hurt her feelings by taking us away
from her; and she did not condemn my sister's husband,
who had acted so badly. as to what her goodness was to
the servants, it goes without saying. She grew up with
the knowledge that there are masters and servants, but
she used her own position only to serve others. She
never reproached me directly for my bad life, although
she was pained at it. Neither did she reproach my
brother Sergey, whom she also warmly loved, when he
formed a connection with a gypsy girl. The only
indication of anxiety which she gave on occasions when he
was very late in coming home was that she used to say,
"What's the matter with our Sergey?" Instead of
Seryozha, merely Sergey. She never in words taught how
one should live; she never moralized. All her moral work
was worked out within her, and externally appeared only
deeds -- indeed, not deeds -- there were none of these,
but all her peaceful, humble, submissive life of love,
not an agitated self-admiring passion, but a quiet
unobtrusive love.
She fulfilled the inner work of love, and therefore
she had no cause to hurry anywhere. And these two
features, love and repose, imperceptibly attracted one
into her society and gave a special delight to intimacy
with her.
And, as I know no case when she hurt any one, so
also I know no one who did not love her. She never spoke
about herself; never about religion, as to what one
should believe or what she herself believed and prayed
for. She believed all, save that she repudiated one
single dogma -- that of eternal punishment. "Dier, qui
est la bonte meme, ne peut pas vouloir nos souffrances."
Except at Te Deums and Requiems, I never saw her
pray. Only through a special affability with which she
sometimes met me when I, occasionally late at night,
after having said goodby, returned to her, did I guess
that I had interrupted her prayer. "Come in, come in!"
she used to say. "And I had just been saying to Natalya
Petrovna that Nicolas would look in again." She often
called me by my father's name, and this was specially
pleasant to me, as it showed that her conceptions of me
and of my father were blended in one love of both. At
this late time of the evening, she was already in her
nightdress, with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, with
little spindle-like legs, in her slippers -- Natalya
Petrovna was in a similar negligee.
Sit down, sit down," she used to say when she saw
that I could not sleep or was suffering from solitude.
And the memory of these irregular late sittings-up are
especially dear to me. It often happened that Natalya
Petrovna, or else myself, would say something funny, and
she would laugh good-naturedly, and immediately Natalya
Petrovna would laugh too, and both old ladies would laugh
for a long time, themselves not knowing at what, but like
children, merely because they loved everyone and felt
happy.
It was not only the love for me which was joyous.
The atmosphere was joyous, an atmosphere of love to all
present, absent, living and dead, and even to animals.
I will, if I have occasion to dig up my past life,
say a good deal more about her. Now I will mention only
the attitude of the poor, of the peasants of Yasnaya
Polyana toward her, as manifested at her funeral; when we
carried her through the village there was not one
homestead among the sixty from which the dwellers did not
come out and demand a halt and a requiem. "She was a
good lady, she did no one any harm," said all. and for
this she was loved, greatly loved. Laotze says that
things are valuable through what is absent from them. So
also with life -- the best feature it can have is that is
should not contain evil. In the life of my aunt Tatyana
Aleksandrovna there was no evil. This is easy to say,
but the character is difficult to exemplify. And I have
known only one individual who exemplified it.
She died quietly, gradually falling asleep, and died
as she wished to die, not in the room where she lived, so
as not to sadden it for us.
In her last moments she recognized scarcely any one.
Me she always recognized, smiling, and her face glowing
like a lamp when the button is pressed, and sometimes she
moved her lips endeavoring to pronounce the name
"Nicholas" thus, just before her death, quite inseparably
uniting me with the one she had loved all her life.
And it was to her -- to her -- that I refused that
little joy which dates and chocolates afforded her, and
that not so much on her own account as for the pleasure
she took in treating me to them -- and refused her the
possibility of giving a little money to those who asked
from her. I cannot recall this without an acute pang of
conscience. Dear, dear Auntie, pardon me. "Si jeunesse
savait, si viellesse pouvait" -- not in regard of the
welfare which one has missed for oneself in youth but of
the welfare one has not given -- of the evil one has done
to those that are no more. [From Tolstoy's Manuscript
Memoirs]
the scanty but valuable information which Tolstoy gives about the servants who surrounded him during his childhood is exceedingly interesting. This information may serve as a supplement to what is described in his published story "Childhood". We find this description in his Reminiscences as well.
Though Tolstoy did not spend the whole of the summer of 1858 in Yasnaya Polyana, being often away in Moscow, yet peasant life interested him more and more, and he made an effort to get in touch with "common" people.
In his Reminiscences Fet quotes the words of Tolstoy's brother Nikolay, full of fine humor concerning those efforts:
In answer to our inquires, the Count gave with
undisguised delight the following account of his beloved
brother: "Lyovochka," he said, "tries hard to become
better acquainted with the life of the peasant and his
way of managing his land, of which we all know very
little. However, I really cannot tell how far the
acquaintance will go. Lyovochka desires to take in all,
not to miss anything, not even gymnastics. That is why
there is a bar placed under the window of his study. To
be sure, setting aside prejudices with which he is so
much at war, he is right; the gymnastics don't interfere
with his estate affairs, but his bailiff views the matter
somewhat differently. `I would come,' he said, `for
orders, but the master had got hold of a perch with one
knee and was hanging in his red tights with his head
downward swinging, his hair falling down dishevelled, and
his red face bursting. I did not know whether to listen
to his orders or to stand and wonder at him.' Lyovochka
was pleased to see how Yufan would spread wide his arms
when he was ploughing. And now Yufan became the emblem
of the country's power, something like Mikula
Selyaninovich. Spreading out his elbows, he too stuck to
the plough and tried to imitate Yufan."
In May of the same year [1858], Tolstoy wrote to Fet from Yasnaya Polyana:
Dearest Old Fellow -- I am writing two words only to
say that I embrace you with all my might, that I have
received your letter, that I kiss Maria Petrovna's hands,
send a greeting to all yours. Auntie is very thankful
for your remembering her and she greets you; and so does
my sister. What a splendid spring it has been and is
still. In my solitude I have enjoyed it immensely. My
brother Nikolay must be at Nikolskoye; catch him there
and do not let him go. This month I intend coming to see
you. Turgenev has gone to Winzig until August to treat
himself. The deuce take him! I am tired of loving him.
He will not cure himself, but us he will deprive of his
company. With this, goodby dear friend. If before my
arrival you will write no verses, I will manage to
squeeze them out of you. Yours, Count L. Tolstoy."
What a Whitsuntide we had yesterday! What a service
at church, with fading wild cherry blossom, white hair,
bright red cretonne, and a hot sun! And then another:
Hallo, old man! Hallo! First, you yourself give no
sign of life, when it is spring and you know that we are
thinking of you, and that I am chained, like Prometheus,
to a rock, and nevertheless thirst to see and hear you.
You should either come or write, decidedly. Secondly,
you have appropriated my brother, and a very good one.
The chief culprit, I think, is Maria Petrovna, to whom I
send my best greetings, and whom I beg to return my own
brother. Joking apart, he sent to say he was coming back
next week. And Druzhinin will also be here, so do come
too, dear old fellow.
After discharging his summer duties at the estate, Tolstoy would take his share in works of public interest.
A meeting of noblemen of the Tula province was held in the autumn of 1858, from September 1 to September 4, for the election of representatives to the Tula Committee for the Improvement of the Status of the Peasantry. At that meeting, in virtue of the statute regulating elections, by which the nobles have a right to express their opinion on the wants of their province and on provincial affairs generally, a hundred and five noblemen handed over to the Tula Marshal of nobility the following resolution, to be presented to the Provincial Committee:
Having in view the improvement of the status of the
peasant, the security of the landowner's position in
respect of his property, and the safety of both peasants
and landowners, we, the undersigned, are of opinion that
the peasants ought to be liberated and a certain amount
of land allotted to them and their descendants, and that
the landowners should be compensated fully and fairly in
money by means of some financial operation which will not
result in compulsory relations between landowner and
peasant; all such relations the nobility consider should
be abolished. (There follow the signatures of a hundred
and five noblemen of Tula Province, among which, of
course, was the name of the Krapovna landowner, Count L.
N. Tolstoy.) ["The Contemporary" 1858, vol. lxxii, p300]
We must return to Fet's Reminiscences.
Since my wife and I left Moscow in the autumn of
1858, Tolstoy contrived, as may be seen from the
following letter to me forwarded from Novoselki to
Moscow, to go out hunting with Borisov, who lent Tolstoy
his whipper-in, together with a horse and dogs.
October 24th [1858] he wrote from Moscow: Dearest old
chap, Fetinka -- Indeed you are a dear fellow, and I love
you dreadfully. That's all. To write stories is silly -
- a shame. To write verses...well, you may do so; but
love a good man is very pleasant. And yet perhaps
against my will and consciousness, it is not myself but
an unripe story working in me, that makes me love. I
sometimes think so. However, one may avoid it, still
from time to time between manure and this Kapoemon, one
finds oneself writing a story. I am glad, however, that
I have not yet allowed myself to write, and will not.
Thank you most heartily for your trouble about the
veterinary, etc. I have found the Tula one, and he has
begun the treatment. What will come of it I don't know.
And the deuce take them all. Druzhinin requests me to
write a story for him like a friend. And I really intend
to compose one. I will compose such a one that there
will be nothing in it: The Shah of Persia is smoking a
pipe, and I love you. That will be a poser. Joking
apart, how is you "Hafiz"? Whatever may be said, the
height of wisdom and firmness for me is to rejoice at
other people's writing, but not to let one's own out into
the world in an ugly garb, but to consume it oneself with
one's daily bread. Yet sometimes one suddenly feels such
a desire to be a great man, and so annoyed that hitherto
this has not been realized. One even hurries to get up,
or finish one's dinner in order to begin. One couldn't
express all one's frivolous thoughts, but it is pleasant
to communicate at least one to such a dear old fellow as
you are, who lives entirely in such frivolity; send me
one of the longest pieces of poetry by "Hafiz" you have
translated, me faire venir l'eau ... la bouche, and I will
send you a sample of wheat. Sport has bored me to death.
The weather is excellent, but I do not go hunting alone.
In December 1858, during a hunting expedition, Tolstoy met with an accident which nearly cost him his life. Fed describes it this way:
Gromeka wrote on December 15, 1858: "As you desired
me, I hasten to inform you, deaf Afanasy Afanasyevich,
that one of these days, about the 18th or 20th, I mean to
go out bear-hunting. Tell Tolstoy that I have bought a
she-bear with two young ones, and that if he cares to
take part in the hunt, he must come to Volochok about the
18th or 19th, straight on to my place, without ceremony,
and that I will meet him with open arms, and a room will
be ready for him. If he is not coming, please let me
know at once.
"I think the hunt will certainly take place on the
19th. It will be best, therefore, indeed necessary, to
come on the 18th.
"If Tolstoy would like to put off to the 21st, then
let me know; it would be impossible to wait longer."
For greater inducement, the well-known leader in
hear hunts, Ostashkov, paid Tolstoy a visit. On his
appearance in the hunting field, the scene can only be
compared to the plunging of a red-hot iron into cold
water. Wild excitement and uproar followed. Seeing that
each bear hunter must possess two guns, Tolstoy borrowed
my German double-barrelled gun, intended for small shot.
At the appointed day, our hunter Lev Nikolayevich started
for the Nikolayevskiy railway station. I will try to
repeat correctly all I heard from Tolstoy and his
companions in the bear hunt.
When the hunters, each carrying two loaded guns,
gook their places along the meadow running through the
wood, which looked like a chess board from its openings,
they were advised to tread the deep snow as wide as
possible round them so as to get more freedom of
movement. But Tolstoy remained at his post in snow
almost up to his waist, declaring that there was no need
to tread the snow at all, as they were going to shoot the
bear and not to fight her. Accordingly, the Count placed
one of the guns against the trunk of a tree, so that when
he had fired off the two charges of his gun, he could
throw it away and, holding out his hand, catch mine.
Presently the she-bear was startled out of her den by
Ostashkov and made her appearance. She rushed out down
the valley along which the hunters were placed in a
direction at right angles to it, by one of the openings.
This alley opened on to the spot where was standing the
hunter nearest to Tolstoy, so that the latter could not
even see the approach of the bear. But she, probably
scenting the hunter she was after all the time, swiftly
rushed to the cross opening and suddenly appeared at a
very short distance from Tolstoy and quickly flew at him.
Tolstoy deliberately aimed and pulled the trigger, but
probably missed, for in the cloud of smoke he saw
something huge approaching. He gave another shot almost
face to face, and the bullet hit the bear's jaw, where it
stuck between the teeth. The Count could not move aside,
the untrodden snow giving him no room, and he had no time
to snatch my gun, for he was knocked down and fell with
his face in the snow. At a run the bear crossed over
him. "There," thought the Count, "all is over with me.
I missed now and shall have no time to shoot at her
again!"
At this moment he saw something dark over his head.
It was the she-bear, who had instantly returned, and who
tried to bite the head of the hunter who had wounded her.
Lying with his face downward in the thick snow, Tolstoy
could only offer passive resistance, trying as much as he
could to draw his head between his shoulders and expose
his thick fur cap to the beast's mouth. Perhaps in
consequence of these instinctive maneuvers, the bear,
being twice unsuccessful, managed to give only one
considerable bite, with her upper teeth tearing the cheek
under his left eye, and with the lower the whole skin of
the left part of his forehead. At that moment Ostashkov
arrived near, and running up with his small switch in his
hand, he approached the bear with his usual "Where are
you getting to? Where are you getting to?" At the sound
of this exclamation, the bear ran away as quickly as she
could. It seems the next day she was surrounded and
killed.
The first words of Tolstoy, when he got up with the
skin hanging down his face, which had to be bandaged with
handkerchiefs on the spot, were: "What will Fet say?"
I am proud of it still. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part
I" p226]
Having got over the shock, Tolstoy hastened to inform his aunt of the incident and, in his letter of December 25th [1858] thus described what had happened.
First of all I congratulate you, secondly I am
afraid that news of an adventure I have had may in some
way reach you in an exaggerated form, and therefore I
make haste to inform you of it myself.
I have been hunting bears with Nicolas. On the 21st
I shot a bear; on the 22nd, when we again went out, an
extraordinary thing happened to me. The bear, without
seeing me, charged me; I shot at it at a distance of six
yards, missed it the first time, the second mortally
wounded it; but it rushed at me, knocked me down, and
while my companions were running up, it bit me twice in
the forehead over the eye and under the eye.
Fortunately, this lasted only ten or fifteen seconds; the
bear made its escape and I rose up with a slight injury
which neither disfigures me nor causes pain; neither the
skull nor the eye is injured, so that I have escaped with
merely a little scar, which will remain on my forehead.
I am now in Moscow and feel perfectly well. I am writing
you the whole truth without concealing anything, so that
you may not be anxious. Everything is now over, and it
only remains to thank God, who has saved me in such an
extraordinary way.
This episode served as a subject for his tale "The Wish Is Stronger Than Bondage", published in the "Books to Read". There are many artistic details left out by Fet with which the fancy of the artist adorned the real facts of the incident. That is why, in relating it, we preferred to use the reminiscences of Tolstoy's friend and his own letter, as better serving our purpose.
The early months of 1859 Tolstoy spent in Moscow, and in April he went to st. Petersburg, where he spent ten days in the company of his friend A. A. Tolstaya. He cherished the most grateful memories of this visit.
At the end of April [1859], Tolstoy was again at Yasnaya Polyana, and there he remained for the whole summer.
During the summer, Tolstoy paid a visit to Turgenev at his house at Spasskoye.
In verses sent to Fet on July 16, 1859, Turgenev wrote:
Embrace, please, Nikolay Tolstoy,
And give to Lev Tolstoy my compliments, and to his sister too.
He rightly says in his postscript:
I have "no cause" to write to him. I know
He loves me slightly and I love him slightly--
Too different in us are our elements,
But many are the roads across this world,
We need not stand in one another's way. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p305]
These lines show that their relations continued mutually respectful and amiably cold.
However, the visit went off smoothly. In his letter to Fet of october 9th of the same year [1859], Turgenev thus speaks of their meeting:
Our ladies send their best greetings to all of you.
I had a quiet talk with Tolstoy, and we parted on
friendly terms. It seems there can be no
misunderstanding between us, because we know each other
too well, and we understand that it is impossible for us
to become intimate. We are modelled in different clay.
In August [1859], Tolstoy is again in Moscow, where he spent the autumn.
The year 1860 found him again in a perturbed mood.
Yet during the winter of 1859-60 he enjoyed rest and pleasure in his schools. In his "Confession" he speaks of that time in the following terms:
On my return from aborad, I settled in the country
and occupied myself with the organization of schools for
the peasantry. This occupation was especially grateful
to me, because it was free from the spirit of imposture
which so strikes me in the career of a literary teacher.
Here again I acted in the name of progress, this
time I brought a spirit of critical inquiry to bear on
the system on which the progress rested. I said to
myself that progress was often attempted in an irrational
manner, and that it was necessary to leave a primitive
people and the children of peasants perfectly free to
choose the way of progress which they thought best. In
reality, I was still bent on the solution of the same
impossible problem, how to teach without knowing what it
was I had to teach. In the highest sphere of literature
I had understood that it was impossible to do this,
because I had seen that everybody had his own way of
teaching, and that the teachers quarrelled among
themselves, and scarcely succeeded in concealing their
ignorance. Having now to deal with peasant children, I
thought I could get over this difficulty by allowing the
children to learn whatever they liked. It seems now
absurd, when I remember the experiments by which I
carried out this whim of mine as to teaching, thought I
knew in my heart that I could teach nothing useful,
because I myself did not know what it was necessary to
teach.
This constant feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, this searching for the meaning of life, was a permanently active force, leading him forward on the path of his moral progress.
In February [1859], Tolstoy was admitted a member of the Moscow Society of Admirers of Russian Literature.
On February 4, 1859, a meeting of the Society was held, under the presidency of A. S. Khomyakov.
Tolstoy was present at this meeting and was one of the newly elected members; and, in accordance with the rules of the Society, he had to make an inaugural address. In it, as stated in the records of the Society, he mentioned the advantage of the purely artistic element in literature over all temporary tendencies. Unfortunately, this speech has never been preserved. In the minutes of the sitting it is stated that at first it was resolved to have the address printed, together with the works of the Society, but afterward, the works not being published, the speech was returned to the author, who has probably mislaid it along with useless papers. [The Moscow Society of Admirers of Russian Literature, "The Collection of Minutes." One of the few remaining copies is in the British Museum.]
We can get some idea of this speech from the excellent reply made by A. S. Khomyakov, which we quote in toto:
The Society of the Admirers of Russian Literature,
in adding you, Count Tolstoy, to the number of its
members, bids you welcome as a worker in the field of
pure art. In your address you defend the tendency of
pure art, placing it above all other temporary and casual
tendencies of literary activity. It would be strange if
the Society did not sympathize with you, but I beg leave
to say that the justice of your views, so skillfully
expounded by you, does not exclude the rights of the
contemporary and the casual in the domain of letters.
That which is always just, that which is always
beautiful, that which is unchangeable like the
fundamental laws of the soul -- that undoubtedly
occupies, and must occupy, the foremost place in the
thoughts, in the impulses, and therefore in the words of
man. That, and that alone, is handed down from
generation to generation, from nation to nation, as a
precious inheritance, always being multiplied and never
forgotten. But, on the other hand, there exists in the
nature of man, and in the nature of society, as I had the
honor to state, a constant demand for self-exposure;
there are moments, important moments, in history when
this self-denunciation acquires special decisive rights,
and comes forward in the domain of letters with greater
precision and greater sharpness.
In the historic process of the life of a nation, the
temporary and the casual acquire the significance of the
universal, of the all-human, if only for the reason that
all generations, all people, can and do understand the
painful cries and the painful confessions peculiar to a
particular generation or a particular people. The rights
of literature, as subordinate to eternal beauty, do not
annihilate the rights of literature as the instrument of
criticism and of the disclosure of human defects, while
at the same time they help to heal social sores. There
is boundless beauty in the serene truth and harmony of
the soul; but there is also true and high beauty in the
penitence which restores truth and guides men or
communities to moral perfection. Let me add that I
cannot share the one-sided views (as they seem to me) of
German aesthetics.
Of course, art is quite free: in itself it finds
its justification and its aim. But freedom of art,
abstractedly understood, has nothing to do with the inner
life of the artist.
The artist is not the theory, not the domain of
thought and intellectual activity: he is a man, and
always a man of his time, usually its best
representative, steeped in its spirit, and that both in
its established and its still developing tendencies.
By the very sensitiveness of his organization,
without which he could not be an artist, he, more than
others, enters into all the painful as well as joyful
sensations of the world which surrounds him.
By always devoting himself to the true and the
beautiful, he involuntarily reflects in word, thought,
and imagination the contemporary epoch in its mixture of
truth, which gladdens a pure heart, and falsehood, which
perturbs its harmonious repose.
Thus flow together the two streams of literature of
which we spoke; thus a writer, a servant of pure art,
becomes at times a trenchant social critic, and that
unwittingly and sometimes even against his will. I beg
leave, Count, to take you as an example. You are
treading the particular path of literary art
unflinchingly and rightly, but are you really quite alien
to the tendency which you call denunciatory literature?
Now in the picture of the consumptive driver dying
on the stove in the midst of a group of comrades, who are
evidently indifferent to his sufferings, is it not
possible that you revealed some social disease, some kind
of vice? In describing this death, did you not feel pain
at the callous indifference of those good-natured but
unawakened human souls? Yes, and therefore you were and
must be an involuntary teacher. I wish you good speed on
the grand path you have chosen.
Success be with you in the future as it has been
hitherto, or let it be still greater, for your gift is
not a transitory gift, not one to be soon exhausted.
But, believe me, in letters the eternal and artistic
constantly absorb the temporary and transient, developing
and ennobling them, and all the various streams of the
domain of human letters constantly flow together, forming
one harmonious current. ["Russian Archive", 1986, No. 11
p491. Article of V. N. Lyaskovskiy, "A.S. Khomyakov:
His Biography and His Teaching."]
The prophecy of Khomyakov was fulfilled. Apart from the denunicatory element of all Tolstoy's work of the first period, twenty years later Tolstoy came forward with his own penitence, and then with his denunciation of contemporary evils. And in this cause he has concentrated all his powerful artistic gifts.
In February 1860, Fet wrote to Tolstoy to consult him as to an intention which he had of buying some land and devoting himself to agriculture. Tolstoy's answer was very sympathetic, he approved of Fet's plans, offered his help, mentioning certain lands for sale, and after this businesslike part of the letter, of no general interest, he expressed the following important thoughts about some works of Turgenev and Ostrovskiy:
I have read "On the Eve". This is my opinion. To
write stories is in general a mistake, and especially so
on the part of those who feel unhappy and do not exactly
know what they desire from life. However, "On the Eve"
is much better than "A Nest of Nobles", and there are in
it excellent negative characters: the artist and the
father. The other characters not only fail to be types,
but their conception, their situation, is not typical, or
else they are quite trivial. However, this is Turgenev's
usual mistake. the young lady is wretchedly drawn:
"Oh,how I love you...she had long eyelashes...." In
general, it always astonishes me in Turgenev that with
his intelligence and poetic sensitiveness he is not able
to avoid insipidity, and that even in his methods. There
is more of this insipidity in his negative methods,
reminding one of Gogol. There isno humanity, no sympathy
with the characters, but monsters are represented whom he
abuses but does not pity. This painfully jars with the
liberal tone and bearing of all the rest. This method
may have been good in times gone by and in those of
Gogol. Besides, one must add that if one does not pity
one's most insignificant characters, then one should cut
them up like mincemeat, or else laugh them down till
one's sides ache; but not treat them as Turgenev does,
filled with spleen and dyspepsia. In general, however,
no one else now could write such a story, although it
will not meet with success.
"The Tempest" by Ostrovskiy is to my mind a pitiful
work, but it will succeed. Neither Ostrovskiy nor
Turgenev is to blame, but the times....Another thing is
now required. It is not for us to learn but to teach
Tommy and Mary at least a little of what we know. Goodby
dear friend.
Tolstoy had arrived at the conclusion that a man endowed with brains and enriched with knowledge must, before deriving pleasure from them for himself, give a share in the benefit of them to those who are deprived of both. Accordingly, he had devoted to the school the time he had free from his work on the estate. In these occupations he passed the winter of 1859-60. At the same time, while doing reading, serious reading, he had come to the following conclusions:
1st February [1860] -- I have read La degenerescence
de l'esprit humain, and about there being physically a
higher degree of intellectual development. In this
state I mechanically thought of prayer. Prayer to whom?
What! is God conceived so clearly that one can beseech
and communicate with Him? If I do conceive such a one He
loses all magesty for me. A God whom one can beseech and
serve is the expression of the weakness of one's mind.
God is God precisely because I cannot imagine the whole
of His being. Besides, He is not a being but a Law and
a Power.
Let these lines remain as an indication of my
conviction of the power of the mind.
Then he reads Auerbah's storie, "Reynard the Fox" by Goethe, and finally about the same time he jots down the following thought:
A strange religion is mine and that of our time, the
religion of progress. Who said that progress was good?
It is merely the absence of faith and the striving after
lines of activity -- represented as faith. Man requires
an impulse - Schwung -- Yes, that is it.
These thoughts were fully developed in his educational works, as we shall see later on, and also in the self-analysis contained in his confession quoted above.
Tolstoy's friends were watching his literary career with intense interest, treating condescendingly and half-jokingly "the foolishness and eccentricity", as they called them, of those manifestations of the deep inner growth in Tolstoy, which most of them wholly failed to understand.
Thus, Botkin casually wrote to Fet on March 6, 1860:
I learned with joy from Turgenev's letter that
Tolstoy has again set to work at his Caucasian novel. He
may play the fool as long as he likes, still I maintain
he is a man with great gifts. Any portion of his
foolishness is of more value to me than the wisest acts
of others. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p324]
Turgenev's attitude was the same: here is part of his letter to Fet of the same year:
But Lev Tolstoy still goes on in his queer way.
Such is evidently his destiny. When will he make his
last somersault and stand on his feet? [A. Fet, "My
Reminiscences, Part I" p325]
In the spring of 1860, Fet and his wife paid their usual visit at Yasnaya Polyana on their way from town to the country Fet made a short not of his stay there on this occasion.
Of course, we could not refuse ourselves the
pleasure of spending a couple of days in Yasnaya Polyana,
where to add to our joy, we found dear N. N. Tolstoy, who
for his original Oriental wisdom has earned the nickname
of Firdusi. How many delightful plans of staying in the
gable in Yasnaya Polyana were discussed in great detail
by us during those two days! It did not occur to any one
of us how unsound all those plans were.
Further on, Fet tells of the coming of Nikolay Tolstoy to their place:
Once Nikolay Tolstoy arrived here in the middle of
May and told us that his sister Marie Tolstaya and his
brothers had persuaded him to go abroad on account of his
unbearable fits of coughing. He was very thin at this
time, apart from his usual slimness. From time to time
in his good-natured laughter could be heard that note of
irritability which is habitual with consumptive people.
I remember how he once got angry and pulled his hand from
the coachman, who had tried to kiss it. True, he said
nothing in the presence of the serf, but when the latter
went out to see to the horses, he began to complain with
annoyance in his voice to me and Borisov: "What made the
idiot kiss my hand? It never happened before." [A. Fet,
"My Reminiscences, Part I" p326]
Since we have to speak of Tolstoy's relations to his brother during his life and at his death, it may be well to quote Fet's character sketch of this remarkable man:
Count N. N. Tolstoy, who called on us almost every
evening, used to bring with him a moral interest and
vivacity, which it is difficult to describe in a few
words. At that time he was still wearing his uniform as
an artillery officer, and it was sufficient to give a
glance at his thin hands, his great thoughtful eyes and
hollow cheeks to be convinced that cruel consumption had
laid its merciless hold on this good natured and kindly
humorous man. Unfortunately, this remarkable man, of
whom to say that he was loved by those who knew him is
not enough, for they simply worshipped him, this man,
while in the Caucasus, had acquired that habit of
indulgence in alcoholic liquors which at that time was
common among officers. Though I afterwart knew N.
Tolstoy intimately and spent with him much time in far
off hunting fields, where it would have been easier to
drink than at evening parties, yet during our three
years' friendship I never noticed the slightest symptom
of his being overcome by wine or spirits. He would sit
in an armchair close to the table and sip his tea with
some cognac added to it. Being of a very modest
disposition, he needed a great deal of questioning to
make him talk. But once launched on any subject, he
would reveal all the acutness and mirth of his kind-
hearted sense of humor. He evidently adored his youngest
borther Lev. But one had to hear how ironically he
described his society adventures. He could so definitely
separate what is the real substance of life from its
gauzy outer seeming, that he treated with equal irony the
higher and lower strata of Caucasian life. The
celebrated hunter of the sect of old believers, Uncle
Epishka (in Tolstoy's "Cossacks" Yeroshka), was evidently
discovered and defined with the mastery of an artist by
N. Tolstoy. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p217]
N. N. Tolstoy wrote very little. We only know of his "Memoirs of a Sportsman."
E. Garshin in his "Reminiscences of Turgenev" quotes the following opinion of his concerning N. Tolstoy:
The humility of life [said Turgenev] which was
theoretically worked out by Lev Tolstoy, was really
practised by his brother. He always lived somewhere in
the outskirts of Moscow, in poor lodgings were were more
like a hut, and gladly shared what he had with the
poorest man. He was a delightful character and a good
story-teller, but writing was almost physically
impossible for him. The very process of writing was a
difficulty with him, just as it is with a laborer whose
hands are so roughened by work that he can scarcely hold
the pen between his fingers. [E. Garshin, "Reminiscences
of Turgenev" Historical Review, November 1883.]
To the general joy of his friends, N. Tolstoy's journey abroad was actually settled. This joy, however, was of short duration.
He levt Russia via St. Petersburg with his brother Sergey.
Turgenev, who had a strong regard for him, felt very anxious and wrote to Fet fromSodene on June 1, 1860:
What you tell me of Nikolay Tolstoy's illness
grieves me deeply. Is it possible that this dear, good
fellow must perish? How could any one neglect such an
illness? Is it possible that he did not try to overcome
his indolence and go abroad for his health? He used to
travel to the Caucasus in most infernally uncomfortable
vehicles. Why not make him come to Sodene? One meets
here dozens of sufferers from chest complaints: the
Sodene waters are almost the best, if not the best for
such cases. I say all this to you at a distance of two
thousand versts, as if my words were of some help....If
Tolstoy has not yet started, he will not go....This is
how fate plays with us all. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences,
Part I", pp 328, 329]
He repeats the same in the postscript of the same letter:
If N. Tolstoy has not yet gone, throw yourself at
his feet and implore him, then drive him by force abroad.
The air here, for instance, is so mild, nothing of the
kind exists in Russia. [Ibid]
Of course Tolstoy was very much alarmed by his brother's illness. Here is a letter written about that time by him to Fet, in which, besides his anxiety about his brother, he expressed certain views on agricultural work:
...That besides your literary work you wish to find
a place on the earth and burrow about in it like an ant -
- such an idea was not only bound to suggest itself to
you, but you are sure to realize it better than myself,
being, as you are, a good man with a healthy outlook on
life. However, it is not for me at the present moment to
patronizingly approve or disapprove of you, for I am
burdened with a sense of great inconsistency. Farming in
the big way I am doing, oppresses me; personal labor on
the land I can only as yet contemplate at a distance. On
the other hand, I am oppressed by family worries, the
illness of Nikolenka, of whom there is yet no news from
abroad, and the departure of my sister in three days'
time depress me. In general, I feel undone. Owing to my
sister's helplessness and the desire to see Nikolas, I
will tomorrow procure a passport for abroad and will
perhaps accompany them, especially if I do not get any
news or get bad news from Nikolas.
At that time a pause ensued in the literary activity of both Tolstoy and his friend Fet, who, though feebly, yet accurately reflected the inner process going on in Tolstoy's life.
The following are examples of the well-reasoned letters written by Druzhinin to Tolstoy and Fet, inciting them to literary work. His letter to Tolstoy is particularly interesting:
I hasten, my amiable friend Tolstoy, to answer your
letter concerning your attitude to literature. As you
will probably understand, every writer is attacked by
moments of doubt and dissatisfaction with himself; it
does not matter how strong and natural this feeling is,
nobody relinquishes literature in consequence, but all
write on till the end of life. But all your good and
evil impulses stick to you with peculiar tenacity, and
therefore you are more bound to think over it than
anybody else, and you should consider the whole matter in
a genial manner.
In the first place, remember that compared with the
labor of poetry and thought, all other labors seem
trivial. Qui a bu, boira, and for a writer to give up
his activity at the age of thirty means depriving himself
of one-half of all the interests of life. And this is
only one of the difficulties of the matter; there is much
of wider significance.
After his return from abroad, Tolstoy passed through St. Petersburg. In the beginning of May [1861], he was in Moscow, and soon afterward in Yasnaya Polyana.
Russian was then celebrating the coming of a new era, the liberation of the peasantry from serfdom.
All those who were honest, educated, and of progressive opinions turned their energy in the direction of social reform. One of the first among them was Lev Tolstoy.
With the beginning of social work his life became so many- sided that one must turn away from the strict chronology of the story and give a parallel description of his principal kinds of contemporary activity. Every direction that his labors took was connected with facts of his personal and family life.
At the beginning of the 1860s, the social activity of Tolstoy manifested itself chiefly in two spheres: in the administrative as a peace mediator, and in the ducational as a teacher, organizer of peasant schools, and educational writer.
We intend to give a description of both branches of activity, but before that it is necessary to narrate some facts of Tolstoy's personal life.
On his return home, he hastened to call on his good neighbors, Fet and Turgenev. A correspondence ensued between them. Turgenev wrote to Fet from Spasskoye:
[Turgenev writes to Fet} Fetti carissime! I send you
a note from Tolstoy, to whom I wrote today asking him to
come at the beginning of next week without fail, so that
we might together invade you in hour Stepanovka while the
nightingales are still singing and the spring smiles
"bright, beatific--impartial." Expect me at the end of
next week in any case, and till then be quite well, don't
worry, and throw, if only a one-eyed glance, at your
orphan muse. The letter contained the following note from Tolstoy:
I embrace you from all my heart, dear friend, for
your letter and your friendship, and for your being Fet.
Turgenev I would like to see, but you ten times more. It
is so long since we have seen each other, and so much has
happened to both of us since. I am very glad about your
farming operations when I hear and think of them, and I
am a little proud that I have, in at least a small
measure, contributed toward them. We both of us are in
a position to understand the advantage. A friend is a
good thing to have; yet he may die, may for one reason or
other go away, or one may be unable to keep up with him.
But nature is still better...she is cold and difficult to
deal with, and important and exacting, but then she is
such a friend! One cannot lose her untiil death, and
when one dies, one is absorbed in her. I now, however,
associate less with this friend, I have other interests
which engage me; and yet, without the consciousness that
this friend is here at hand, and that were one to stumble
one could catch hold of her -- life would be a sad thing
....
[Fet writes in his "Reminiscences"] In spite of
these kind promises, a carriage appearing at the coppice
and turning from the crossing to our porch was a surprise
to us, and we were delighted to embrace Turgenev and
Tolstoy. The few buildings on our estate at the time
made Turgenev exclaim in wonder, spreading out his large
hands: "We look and look, where is Stepanovka, but in
reality we see a greasy pancake and on it a lump, and
this is Stepanovka."
When the visitors had rested a little from their
journey, and the hostess had made use of the two hours
before dinner to give it a more substantial and cheering
appearance, we plunged into a most lively conversation,
such as can be held only among men not wearied by life.
[A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p368]
During this visit, an unfortunate event occurred -- the quarrel between Turgenev and Tolstoy. It is very fully described by Fet, from whom we borrow the greater part of the description, adding a few corrections and filling some gaps, in accordance with new materials at our disposal.
[Fet writes] In the morning at the usual time, i.e.,
about eight o'clock, our visitors came down to the dining
room in which my wife was sitting at the samovar at one
end of the table and I at the other, waiting for my
coffee, Turgenev at the right and Tolstoy at the left of
the hostess.
Being aware of the importance which Turgenev
attached to his daughter's education, my wife inquired
whether he was pleased with his English governess.
Turgenev showered praises on the governess and among
other things related that the governess, with truly
English practicality, asked Turgenev to fix a sum of
money which his daughter could use for charitable
purposes. "Now," said Turgenev, "the governess requests
my daughter to take the old clothes of the poor and after
mending them herself, to return them to the owners."
"And do you consider this right?" asked Tolstoy.
"Of course I do; it brings the charitable person
nearer to real want."
"And I think that a richly dressed girl who
manipulates dirty, ill-smelling rags is acting a false
and theatrical farce."
"I beg you not to say this," exclaimed Turgenev, his
nostrils dilating.
"Why should not I say what I am convinced of?"
answered Tolstoy.
Turgenev said: "Then you think that I do not bring
up my daughter properly?"
Tolstoy's answer to this was that he thought what he
said, and without venturing upon personalities, expressed
his thoughts. [Memoirs of Countess S. A. Tolstaya]
Fet had not time to cry out to Turgenev to desist when, pale with wrath the latter said: "If you persist in speaking in this way, I will box your ears." With these words he left the table, and, catching hold of his head in great excitement, stepped into the next room. He came back a second after and said, turning to Fet's wife: "For God's sake, forgive my hasty action, which I deeply repent."
He then left the room again. After this, the visitors took their leave.
At the first halting place from Novoselkiy, the property of P. N. Borisov, Tolstoy sent a letter to Turgenev with a demand for satisfaction. then he went on further to Boguslav, the halting place half way between Bet's estate and his own estate Nikolskoye. He sent for pistols and bullets to Nikolskoye and without waiting for an answer to his first letter, sent a second one with a challenge.
In this letter to Turgenev, he said that he did not care to fight in a vulgar manner, that is to say, when two authors come with a third one, with pistols, and the duel ends in champagne- drinking -- he wanted to fight in real earnest, and he asked Turgenev to come to the frontier with pistols.
Tolstoy spent a sleepless night waiting for an answer.
At last came a letter -- Turgenev's answer to the first letter. Turgenev wrote:
[Turgenev writes] L.N. Tolstoy. Dear Sir -- In
answer to yours, I can only repeat what I considered it
my duty to declar at Fet's house. being carried away by
a feeling of animosity which I could not help, and the
causes of which it is useless to enter into, I offended
you without any positive provocation on your part, and I
asked pardon for it. What happened this morning shows
clearly that all attempts at rapprochement between such
different natures as mine and yours will lead to no good,
and I do my duty to you the more willingly as this letter
will probably be the last sign of any relations between
us. With all my heart I trust it will satisfy you, and
I give my consent before hand to any use you may care to
make of it.
With my respects, I have the honor to remain your
faithful servant, Iv. Turgenev. Spasskoye, May 27,
1861.
A postscript followed the same day.
[Turgenev writes] 10 o'clock p.m. Ivan Petrovich
has just brought me back my letter, which my servant sent
by mistake to Novoselkiy instead of forwarding it to
Boguslav. I earnestly beg you to forgive this unexpected
and disagreeable misadventure. I hope my messenger will
still find you in Boguslav.
Tolstoy wrote to Fet, probably on the same day:
[Tolstoy writes] I could not refrain from opening
yet another letter from Turgenev in answer to mine. I
wish you all that is good in your relations with this
man, but I despise him. I have written to him and how
have nothing more to do with him, except so far as,
should he desire it, to give him satisfaction.
Notwithstanding all my apparent indifference, I did not
feel at my ease, and I felt that I ought to demand from
Turgenev a more positive apology, which I did in my
letter from Novoselkiy. Here is his answer, which I
accepted as satisfactory, merely answering that the
grounds upon which I excuse him are not opposite features
in our characters, but -- such as he can himself
understand.
Besides this, owing to his delay, I have sent
another letter in rather harsher terms and with a
challenge: to this I have received no answer, but, if I
do receive one, I will send it to you unopened. So this
is the end of an unfortunate business; if it gets beyond
the threshold of your house, please let it pass with this
accompaniment.
Meanwhile, Turgenev thus answered his challenge:
[Turgenev writes] Your servant says that you desire
to receive an answer to your letter, but I don't see what
I can add to what I have sais already. Maybe when I
acknowledge your right to deman satisfaction by arms, you
will prefer to be satisfied with my expressed and
repeated apology. As to that, it is for you to choose.
I can without affectation that I would willingly face
your fire in order to wipe out the effect of my really
insane words. The fact of my saying what I did is so
foreign to the habits of all my life that I can ascribe
it to nothing but the irritation caused by the extreme
and constant antagonism of our views. This is not an
apology, I mean, not justification, but an explanation.
Such incidents being ineffaceable and irreparable, I
consider it my duty, in parting from you forever, to
repeat once more that in this affair you were right and
I was wrong. Let me add, that it is no question of my
willingness or unwillingness to show myself a brave man
simply, but whether I acknowledge your right to challenge
me to a duel -- according to usual formalities, of
course, i.e., with seconds -- as well as to forgive me.
You have chosen what you prefer, and to me remains to
abide by your decision.
Again, allow me to assure you of my respect. Iv.
Turgenev.
In his desire to reconcile his friends, Fet very likely attempted something of the kind, judging by the following extract from his memoirs:
[Fet writes] L. Tolstoy has sent me the following note:
Turgenev...which I beg you to transmit to him as
accurately as you transmit to me his nice utterances,
notwithstanding my repeated requests not to speak of him.
Count L. Tolstoy
And I beg you yourlesf not to write to me any more,
as I will not open your letters, any more than those of
Turgenev.
I need not say [remarks Fet] that I did my best to
bring the affair, which unfortunately occurred in my
house, to a clear issue. For this purpose I went to
Spasskoye.
I remember the indesbribably sarcastic mood of the
immortal Turgenev. "What an unheard-of idea," he
exclaimed, "to demand that all shall be of our opinion,
and, if that cannot be, to demand a formal apology and
conclude the matter with pistols." So said the uncle to
me, but what he said to Ivan Sergeyich I don't know. As
to my efforts to patch up the affair, then ended, as one
sees, in a formal rupture with Tolstoy, and at the
present moment I cannot remember how our friendly
relations were renewed. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Vol.
I" p368]
Some time elapsed, says the Countess S. A. Tolstaya, and while in Moscow, Tolstoy was one day in one of those charming moods which sometimes came over him, full of humility and love, and wishing and striving for the good and great. While in this mood he could not bear to have an enemy. Therefore he wrote a letter to Turgenev on September 25th [1861], in which he expressed his regret that their relations were hostile. "If I offended you," he wrote, "forgive me; I am very unhappy to know I have an enemy."
This letter was sent to the bookseller Davidov, who had business transactions with Turgenev. For some reason it was not delivered to Turgenev in time, and meanwhile he was alarmed by certain silly rumors, which he thus related to Fed in his letter of November 8th [1861] from Paris:
[Turgenev writes to Fet] Byb the by, one more tale
the last one, concerning the unfortunate affair with
Tolstoy. On my way through St. Petersburg, I heard from
"reliable people" (Oh, those reliable people!) that
copies of the last letter of Tolstoy to me, the one in
which he "despises" me are circulating all over Moscow,
and that these copies are spread about by Tolstoy
himself. This made me very angry, and I have sent him a
challenge from here for the time of my return to Russia.
Tolstoy replied that the circulation of copies is a sheer
fiction, and at the same time enclosed a letter in which
he asked forgiveness and renounced his challenge. Of
courst this must put an end to the affair, and I only ask
you to inform him (for he writes that my address to him
on my part he would consider an offence) that I renounce
my challenge and so on, and I hope that all this is
buried forever. His letter (the apologetic one) I
destroyed, but the other one, which according to him had
been sent through the bookseller Davidov, I have not
received at all. And now to all this affair de
profundis. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Vol. I" p368]
We find the following note in Tolstoy's diary about this letter from Turgenev to Tolstoy:
[Tolstoy writes in his diary] October. Yesterday
I received a letter from Turgenev in which he accuses me
of telling peole that he is a coward, and he says that I
distribute copies of my letter. I wrote to him that this
was nonsense, and I also sent him a letter saying "You
call my action dishonorable, and you desire to give me a
regular slap in the face, but I regard myself as to
blame, I beg your pardon and retract my challenge.
[Countess Tolstaya writes in her memoirs] This
letter was written under the impulse of the idea that if
Turgenev is devoid of the sense of personal honor and
needs honor before the public, he may use this letter;
but that he (Tolstoy) is above it and despises public
opinion. Turgenev was weak enough to agree to it, and he
replied that he considered himself satisfied.
In another letter to Fet of January 7, 1862, Turgenev writes about the same:
[Turgenev writes to Fet] and now, to ask a plain
question: have you seen Tolstoy? Only today have I got
the letter he sent me in September through the bookstores
of Davidov (the punctuality of Russian tradesmen is
remarkable indeed!). In this letter he speaks of his
intention to offend me, apologizes, etc. But almost at
the same time, in consequence of different gossip, of
which, I believe, I informed you, I had sent him my
chellenge, etc. All this drives one to the conclusion
that our constellations move discordantly in the ether,
and it would be best for us, as he proposes, not to meet.
But you may write or tell him (when you see him) that
without phrases and witticisms, I like him very much at
a distance, I respect him and watch his career with
sympathy, but when we come together everything takes a
different aspect. It cannot be helped! We must go on
living as if we existed on different planets or in
different ages. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences" p384]
Probably Fet said something to Tolstoy in the way of a message from Turgenev and again caused irritation against himself, of which he informed Turgenev, for the latter wrote to him, among other things, the following:
[Turgenev writes to Fet] Paris, January 14, 1862.
Dearest Afanasiy Afanasyevich -- In the first place I
feel it necessary to apologize to you for the utterly
unexpected tile (Tuile, as the French have it) which fell
on your head because of my letter. It is a slight
consolation to me that I could not foresee such a sally
from Tolstoy, but intended it all for the best. It
proves, however, that it is a wound not to be touched at
all. Once more please forgive my involuntary sin. [A.
Fet, "My Reminiscences" p384]
With this we may wind up the narrative of a deplorable incident, which like a clap of thunder discharged the tension of the atmosphere between the two great men and perhaps helped afterward to bring them together on a more sincere and sounder basis.
We must add that the description of this matter in Garshin's "Reminiscences of Turgenev," printed in the "Historical Review" for November 1883, is full of misstatements as to place and time and was probably not gathered from first-hand sources.
In 1861 and 1862 Tolstoy occupied the post of a Peace Mediator of the fourth section of the Krapivenskiy District. His employment in this capacity is hardly known in literature -- fortunately its memory is still green among some contemporaries, who were at that time intimate with him. Their remarks are undoubtedly of great interest.
The reputation which Tolstoy won as a manager of his own estate on new principles, i.e., those of one who does not oppress and sweat his peasants, had almost proved an obstacle to his getting the above-mentioned appointment. Correspondence passed and information was given in a sense unfavorable to him in reference to the post. We give here the more important extracts from the material in our possession concerning this affair. The Marshal of Nobility of the province, V. P. Minin, wrote to the Minister of the Interior, Valuyev, complaining of the Governor of Tula province Lunskoy for having appointed Tolstoy Peace Mediator. These were his words:
[Marshal of Nobility writes to Minister of the
Interior] Being aware of a hostile attitude to him on
the part of the Krapivenskiy Nobility, due to his
management of his own estate, the Marshal is afraid lest,
with the Count's appointment to the post, some unpleasant
conflicts may take place, which may hinder the peaceful
settlement of such an important matter.
Then the Marshal pointed out the transgression by the Governor of certain formalities as regards the appointment, hoping that these might serve to annul it.
The Minister of the Interior replied to the Marshal of Nobility that there must be some misunderstanding, and he would write about it to the Governor.
In reply to the Minister's inquiry, the Governor sent the following interesting confidential report, which shows that at the time the high official spheres marched in advance of Russian society, which had not yet awakened to the situation:
[Governor of Tula province writes to the Minister of
the Interior] (Confidential) To this I have the honor
to add, that what gave rise to the present correspondence
may be the appointment of Count L. Tolstoy as a Peace
Mediator of the Krapivenskiy district, contrary to the
opinion of the Marshals of Nobility, both of the province
and the district, who object to his election on the
alleged ground that he is disliked by the local nobility.
Being acquainted with Count Tolstoy, and knowing him
for a well-educated man and one in great sympathy with
the present reform, and taking also into consideration
the expressed desire of some landowners of the
Krapivenskiy district to have him as their Peace
Mediator, I cannot replace hiim by another person quite
unknown to me. The more so as Count Tolstoy was pointed
out to me by your Excellency's predecessor [Lanskoy],
among other persons, as one enjoying the best reputation.
Lieutenant-General Darogan.
After this followed the confirmation of the appointment as Peace Mediator by the Senate.
Interesting papers have lately appeared relating to Tolstoy's activity as Peace Mediator.
These materials throw a new light on his personal character, as in all the suits of which records are produced he appears as a true champion of the peasants against the harsh tyranny of the landowners and police officers, and one may easily believe that the fears of the Marshal of the Nobility were not without foundation.
Out of the fifteen suits quoted in those papers, we will choose the most characteristic.
In one case, the landowner, one Mme. Artyukhova, complained of her late house servant, Makr Grigoryev, that he had left her, considering himself a "free man".
On this Tolstoy wrote:
[Tolstoy, as Peace Mediator, writes] Makr can go
away immediately with his wife wherever he likes, in
virtue of my orders. I beg you (1) to compensate him for
the three months and a half he has worked for you
illegally since the announcement of the Act, and (2) to
compensate his wife for the assault upon her, which was
still more illegal. If you are dissatisfied with my
resolution, you have a right to lodge a complaint with
the Assembly of the Justices of the Peace and with the
Council of the Province. I can give you no further
explanations. With my best respects, I remain, yours
faithfully, Count L. Tolstoy.
Mme. Artyukhova lodged a complaint before the Assembly of Peace Mediators. As the Assembly consisted of Peace Mediators who disapproved of Tolstoy's proceedings, they set aside his decision in this case, as in many others, and they forwarded the case to the Provincial Court. Fortunately, his course was there viewed wity sympathy, and his decision in this case, as in many others, was confirmed.
So Mark Grigoryev was set free and his wife was compensated for the assault committed by Mme. Artyukhova.
An interesting affair is the case of the damage done by peasants to a field belonging to one Mikhailovskiy.
The peasants tilled the landowner's field, and during their rest allowed the horses to graze in the meadow of a neighboring landowner. The latter complained to Tolstoy. Tolstoy first asked the landowner to forgive the peasants this trespass, hoping probably thus to improve the relations between the landowner and the peasants, who had cause to complain of him. The landowner refused to overlook the damage done, and he requested an assessment of it to be made and the fine to be paid to him, claiming that it should be eighty rubles.
A long correspondence arose out of this case. The landowner Mikhailovskiy, in complaining to the Assembly of Peace Mediators, described Tolstoy's action in this way:
[Landowner Mikhailovskiy writes] Hereupon Count Tolstoy
arrived at the village Panino, invited three peasants of
the nearest village, Borodino, as referees, and they went
together to the damaged meadow. The referees to whom he
proposed to assess the damages due for the meadow
declared that about three desyatins [a desyatin is about
three acres] of the meadow had been damaged, and the fine
they considered right would be ten rubles per desyatin.
To this Count Tolstoy did not agree and proposed to them
to make it only five rubles. The referees did not
contradict Count Tolstoy, and so the case of the Panino
peasants damaging the landowner's meadows was settled by
Tolstoy in this way, that the peasants had to pay the
landowner Mikhailovskiy for the three desyatins five
rubles each.
Considering this and other proceedings of Count Tolstoy to be illegal, Mikhailovskiy said:
I am firmly convinced that a just Government, in its
solicitude for the improvement of the stauts of the
peasants, would not allow that such improvement and
enrichment of the peasants should be carried out in this
manner put in practice by the Peace Mediator, Count
Tolstoy.
The District Assembly of the Justices, in view of Mikhailovskiy's petition, requested an explanation from tolstoy, but in a paper under No. 323, of September 16, 1861, he replied that "he did not think it necessary to give any information as regards the petition of Mikhailovskiy, in virtue of paragraphs 29, 31, and 32 of the regulation Act in connection with the courts of peasants' affairs. The resolution passed in this case by the District Assembly, and presented to the Provincial Assembly, was dismissed by the latter without any written report, with the following remark: "To be added to the case."
Another case, slight as it is, shows us clearly how far Tolstoy was from having selfish aims in all these proceedings, and how ready he was to acknowledge a mistake of his own, being guided in his actions only by a sincere wish for justice.
A certain Mme. Zaslonina, a landowner, complained of Tolstoy to the Assembly for having issued a leave-of-absence passport to her house serf. Tolstoy was present at the examination into the affair, and he owned that he committed a blunder and offered to cimpensate the lady for the loss she had suffered.
However, these affairs did not all end in such a satisfactory manner for Tolstoy, as, in making himself the champion of the people's right, he had to face a whole party of serfowners who firmly stuck to their old customs and privileges. Thus the landowner Ossipovich and his former serfs had a dispute as follows: Part of the village had been burned and the landowner would not allow the peasants to build on the same spot but requested them to move their homesteads, refusing at the same time to give them proper allowance for new buildings and to free them from obligatory work and give them the time necessary for restoring their ruined homes.
Toldtoy could see that on the one hand, the demands of the peasants were reasonable, but on the other he knew the pitiful situation of the ruined small landowner, and he did not think him able to satisfy the demands of the peasants. He appealed therefore to the nobles of the district to help their colleague to extricate his needy peasants out of the difficulty or simply to help the peasants directly. Both his proposals were dismissed, and the peasants were urged to comply with all the demands of their landowner.
The suit dragged on for some time, going from one court of justice to another. Tolstoy saw that the case would be decided against the peasants and that his opinion would be disregarded. He then protested again, and when during the hearing of the case before the Assembly he saw that the members of the tribunal intentionally misrepresented the affair, he left the Assembly without signing the resolutions relating to cases which had been heard in his presence, being determined to exhaust all means to procure a decision in the peasants' favor. The Assembly lodged a complaint against him with the Provincial Assembly, but this complaint met with no attention.
Again we see how Kostomarov got possession of the peasants holdings by declaring them to be his house servants; that is to say, to belong to a section of the peasants whom the new law did not provide with land. Tolstoy took their part, and after many trials he succeeded in securing their holdings for them.
The poorer landowners resorted to all sorts of subterfuges in order to give to the peasants the smaller allotments of land, and that of the worst quality. As soon as Tolstoy noticed this tendency, he refused to confirm the charters regulating the mutual relations of landowners and peasants, and he tried his best to annul them.
We need hardly say that Tolstoy's sympathy for the peasants was exceedingly distasteful to the landowners. They proclaimed that Tolstoy had thrown a seed of discord between the landowners and the peasantry, and had finally destroyed the patriarchal relations between them; that he was provoking rebellion among the peasants, who were encouraged by him to commit many unlawful acts; that even the officials of the peasants' administrations, in order to ingratiate themselves with Tolstoy, did not perform the duties imposed upon them by the law, so that the result was perfect anarchy in the villages and innumerable irregularities such as staling, lawlessness, and so forth.
Of course, Tolstoy's proceedings as Peace Mediator made the peasants put implicit confidence in him, and this annoyed the landowners still more, so that he was faced with growing difficulties in his task, and had soon to cease his efforts in the hard struggle.
He felt, in fact, very much dissatisfied. As early as July 1861 he wrote in his diary:
[Tolstoy writes] The post of arbitrator has given me
little material for observation and has definitely
spoiled my relations with the landowners, besides
upsetting my health.
On February 12, 1862, Tolstoy wrote to the provincial Court of Justice on peasant affairs:
[Tolstoy writes] As the appeals against my decisions
which have been made to the Provincial Court have no
valid ground, and yet these cases and many others have
been and are still being decided against my opinion, so
that almost every judgment pronounced in the district
under my charge is set aside and even the Starshinas
[elected peasant officials over groups of villages] are
removed by the Court of Arbitrators, under such
circumstances, giving rise to a want of confidence in the
arbitrator on the part of both peasants and landowners,
it becomes not only useless but impossible for the
arbitrator to continue to act. I respectfully request
the Provincial Court to have the above-mentioned appeals
investigated by one of its members, and at the same time
I find myself obliged to inform the provincial Court that
until such investigation takes place, I do not think it
convenient to carry on my duties and have therefore
transferred them to a deputy.
It was on March 9th that Tolstoy had accepted the office of Peace Mediator, but he only performed his duties up to April 30th, when under the pretext of illness, he handed them over to the eldest candidate for that post in the 4th Division. The Senate at last informed the Governor of Tula on May 26th, in a document No. 24,124, that a resolution had been passed to discharge the artillery lieutenant, Count Lev Tolstoy, on the grounds of ill health, from the duties of Peace Mediator of the Krapivenskiy District and that this had been confirmed by the Imperial Senate. [Footnote: D.T. Uspenskiy, "Archive Materials for the Biography of Count L. N. Tolstoy", "Russian Thought", 1903, vol. ix.]
The following story, taken from the biography of Loewenfeld, shows how groundless were the assertions of the landowners as to Tolstoy's favoritism toward the peasants. One can see from it that Tolstoy had defended the demands of the landowners with equal fairness when he considered them just.
[From Lowenfeld's biography of Tolstoy] A witness of
Tolstoy's proceedings as a Peace Mediator, a German from
the Baltic Provinces and bailiff of a landowner in the
Tuls Province, had occasion to call upon him on a matter
of business at Yasnaya Polyana on his patron's belhaf.
What gave occasion to the visit was a disagreement on
certain points relating to peasant allotments. This
could only be settled on the spot, and the Peace Mediator
therefore went in April to the estate of his neighbor,
accompanied by a peasant boy of twelve years of age --
his little land surveyor, as the Count jokingly called
him, because he always carried with him the measuring
chain. Tolstoy received a peasant deputation, consisting
of two elders and one member of the village council, who
came to see him to talk over the matter.
"Well, friends, what do you want?" said Tolstoy.
The delegates stated the request of the village.
Instead of the pasture ground appointed to them, they
wanted another piece of land so as to increase their
allotment.
"I am very sorry, but I cannot do as you wish," said
the Count. "If I did so, I should cause a great loss to
your landlord," and he proceeded to explain quietly the
position of the matter.
"Well, arrange it somehow, little father," said one
of the delegates.
"No, I can do nothing," repeated the Count.
The peasants exchanged glances, scratched their
heads, and persisted, saying: "Do it somehow, little
father."
"If you only would, little father," continued the
spokesman, "you are sure to be able to manage it."
The other two delegates nodded their heads
approvingly.
The Count crossed himself and said: "In the name of
holy God, I swear that I cannot help you."
But even after this the peasants still repeated, "Do
it somehow, little father, be so kind," the count turned
in vexation to the bailiff and said: "One may be an
Amphion and move mountains and forests sooner than
convince these peasants.
During the whole interview, which lasted about an
hour, says our authority, the Count was the
personification of patience and friendliness. The
obstinacy of the peasants did not draw a harsh word from
him. [G. Lowenfeld, Count Tolstoy, his Life and Works,
p228]
The memoirs of a friend and relative of Tolstoy, Prince Dmitriy Dmitriyevich Obolenskiy, refer to the same period:
[Obolenskiy writes] "In 1861, new elections took
place in Tula, and there was to be a dinner in honor of
those Peace Mediators who took part in the elections. In
the very same reception hall where Volotskiy and Prince
Cherkasskiy had quarrelled and were on the point of
fighting a duel about something connected with the
peasant question, Volotskiy first expressed his sympathy
with Cherkasskiy as his colleague, also a Peace Mediator
... this dinner was memorable to me. My uncle, T. A.
Rayevskiy, as the oldest man present, was chairman. Some
of the landowners subscribed to the dinner, and, of
course, I was one of the company. I had to sit next to
Count L. N. Tolstoy, a Peace Mediator at the time, whom
I then knew very well.
The first toast was naturally to the Tsar-Liberator,
and it was received with great enthusiasm.
"I drink to it with particular pleasure," said Count
Tolstoy to me. "No other toasts are needed, for in truth
it is to the Emperor only that we owe the emancipation."
However, other toasts followed. Especially
successful was the toast proposed by P. F. Samarin to the
Russian people -- a very awkward subject at the time.
But Petr Fedorovich had cleverly pointed out in his
speech that almost everywhere in the Tula Province the
relations with the peasants were on a very good foothin,
because the landowners, having used their power
moderately, the relations in question always had been
good and at present were still better than before. And
this was true: the reform went off peacefully in our
province, as compared with others.
In the year of the abolition of serfdom, Count
Tolstoy started his school in Yasnaya Polyana, in which
I took great interest. I was in the habit of visiting
the Count pretty often, and sometimes in the winter I
would go out hunting with him, stopping for rest in
places a long way off. I have had delightful times with
him. Who would recognize in the present venerable
philosopher the reckless sportsman who used to leap
ditches and ravines with great agility and to spend days
at a distance? It is difficult to imagine a better
companion. But I believe the Count was a poor Peace
Mediator, because of his absence of mind. I very well
remember the first charger of regulations coming from
him. It had been subscribed in this way:
"At the request of So-and-so, because of their
illiteracy, the house serf So-and-so signed the charger
of regulations. No name was added. Just as the Count
dictated: "Write, I have signed for So-and-so," the
house-serf had written word for word, not mentioning the
name either of the peasant or his owner. And the Count,
without reading what the house serf had written, sent off
the charter, duly sealed, to the Provincial Court. My
stepfather, who was then a member of the Court, and at
whose house I lived, received this charter. He only
shrugged his shoulders over such a document. [Prince
Obolenskiy, "Reminiscences," "The Russian Archive,"
1894.]
Tolstoy proved incapable in chancellor's office work, but his heart and brain worked well as Peace Mediator, and he has left kind memories of his activity in this direction. But he had greater success, though he met with no fewer obstacles, in the matter of education, which we treat in the following chapters.
Tolstoy had several times started on educational work.
As far back as 1849, when he returned to Yasnaya Polyana from St. Petersburg, along with other institutions and reforms by means of which he tried to approach the people, he established a school for peasant children. From his "A Russian Proprietor" we know how unsuccessful these first attempts were. With his departure for the Caucasus, the school was closed. He reopened it on his return to Yasnaya Polyana after his resignation and his first journey abroad, as was mentioned in the proper place.
On recommencing his school work, Tolstoy soon realized his lack of theoretical knowledge and hastened to fill the void in his education by reading, foreign travel, personal relations with prominent educationists, and practical work in different schools. Feeling himself thus restored, he for the third time and with better zeal turned to his school and carried it up to a remarkably high level.
In one of his educational articles, he thus relates his endeavors and preparations to found a school:
[Tolstoy writes] Fifteen years ago, when I took up
the matter of popular education without any preconceived
theories or views on the subject, with the one desire to
advance the matter in a direct and straightforward
manner, I, as a teacher in my school, was at once
confronted with two questions: (1) What must I teach?
and (2) How must I teach it.?...
In the whole mass of people who are interested in
education, there exists, as there has existed before, the
greatest diversity of opinions. Formerly, just as now,
some in reply to the question of what ought to be taught,
said that outside the rudiments, the most useful
information to give in a primary school is taken from the
natural sciences; others, even as now, that this was not
necessary, and was even injurious; while some, as now,
proposed history or geography, and others denied their
necessity; some proposed the Ecclesiastic-Slavonic
language and grammar to be taken in connection with
religion; others found that superfluous and ascribed a
prime importance to "development". On the question of
how to teach, there has always been a still greater
diversity of answers. The most diversified methods of
instructing in reading and arithmetic have been
proposed...
When I encountered these questions and found no
answer for them in Russian literature, I turned to the
literature of Europe. After having read what had been
written on the subject, and having made the personal
acquaintance of the so-called best representatives of the
science of education in Europe, I not only failed to find
anywhere an answer to the question I was interested in,
but I convinced myself that this question does not even
exist in connection with any science of Education as
such; as every educationist of every given school firmly
believed that the methods he used were the best, because
they were founded on absolute truth, and that it would be
useless for him to look at them with a critical eye.
However, because, as I said, I took up the matter of
popular education without any preconceived notions, or
else because I took up the matter without getting hold of
laws from a distance as to how I ought to teach, but
became a schoolmaster in a village popular school in the
backwoods -- I could not reject the idea that there must
of necessity exist some criterion by means of which I
could solve the question of what to teach and how to
teach it. Should I teach by heart the psalter or the
classification of the organisms? Should I teach
according to the sound-alphabet, taken from the Germans,
or simply use the prayer-book? In the solution of this
question I was aided by a certain tact in teaching, with
which I am gifted, and especially by that close and
passionate interest which I took in the subject.
When I entered at once into the close and direct
relations with those forty tiny peasants that formed by
school (I call them peasants because I found in them the
same characteristics of perspicacity, the same immense
store of information from practical life, of jocularity,
simplicity, and loathing for everything false, which
distinguishes the Russian peasant), when I saw their
susceptibility, their readiness to acquire the
information which they needed, I felt at once that the
antiquated church method of instruction had outlived its
usefulness and was of no use to them. I began to
experiment on other proposed methods of instruction; but
because compulsion in education, both by my conviction
and my character, are repulsive to me, I did not exercise
any pressure, and the moment I noticed that something was
not readily received, I did not put any compulsion on the
pupils but looked for something else. From these
experiments it appeared to me and to those teachers who
gave instruction with me at Yasnaya Polyana and in other
schools on the same principles of freedom, that nearly
everything which in the educational world was written
about schools was separated by an immeasurable abyss from
the truth, and that many of the proposed methods, such as
object-lessons, the teaching of natural sciences, the
sound method, and others, called forth contempt and
ridicule, and were not accepted by the pupils. We began
to look for those contents and those methods which were
readily taken up by the pupils and hit upon that which
forms my method of instruction.
But this method stood in a line with all other
methods, and the question why it was better than the rest
remained unsolved as before....
At that time I found no sympathy in all the
educational literature, indeed not even any
contradiction, but simply complete indifference in regard
to the question which I put. There were some favorable
criticisms of certain trifling details, but the question
itself evidently did not interest any one. I was young
then, and this indifference grieved me. I did not
understand that with my question "How do you know what to
teach and how to teach?" I was like a man who, let us
say, in a gathering of Turkish pashas who were discussing
the question in what manner they could collect the
greatest amount of revenue from the people, should make
them the following proposition: "Gentlemen, before
considering how much revenue to collect from each, we
must first analyze the question on what your right to
exact that revenue is based." Obviously, all the pashas
would continue their discussion of the measures of
extortion, and would reply only with silence to his
irrelevant remark.
Tolstoy's letters from abroad show the interest which he took in the school while he was away. During the whole of the time the teaching in the school went on without ceasing. It continued with greater regularity after his return to Yasnaya Polyana in the spring of 1861, and in 1862, as Tolstoy says in his article on Education:
[Tolstoy writes] Fourteen schools were opened in a
district containing ten thousand souls when I was a rural
judge, besides which there existed about ten schools in
the district among the clericals and on the manors among
the servants. In the three remaining districts of the
county there were fifteen large and thirty small schools
among the clericals and manorial servants....
Everybody will agree that, leaving aside the
question of the quality of instruction, such a relation
of the teacher to the parents and peasants is most just,
natural and desirable.
Finally, we may mention the names of the teachers of the schools under Tolstoy's jurisdiction where his views on the education of the people were supported. In the Golovenkovskiy school, the teacher was one Aleksandr Serdobolskiy, a pupil of the Kazan gymnasium; in the Trasnenskiy school, Ivan Aksentev, a pupil of the Penza gymnasium; in Lomintsevok, Aleksey Shumilin, a pupil of the Kaluga gymnasium; in the Bagucharov school, Boris Golovin, a pupil of the tula theological seminary; in the Baburino school, Alfonse Erlenwein, a pupil of the Kishinev gymnasium; and in Yassenki, Mitrofan Butovich, a pupil of the Kishinev gymnasium; in the Kolpeno school, Anatoliy Tomashevskiy, who finished his studies in the Saratov gymnasium; in the Gorodnya, Vladimir Tokaschevich, who finished his studies in the Penza gymnasium; in the Plekhanovo school, Nikolay Peterson, who finished his studies in the Penza gymnasium for the nobles; the Bogucharov village community chose Sergey Gudim, an ex-student of the Kazan University, in the place of its former teacher, Morozov. [Footnote: D.T. Uspenskiy, "Archive Materials for Tolstoy's Biography." "Russian Thought", 1903, vol. ix.]
Perhaps some of these men may come across this biography and its perusal may induce them to write down memories of their collaboration with the great teacher.
In one of his articles on education, Tolstoy himself sets forth in detail the organization of the school at Yasnaya Polyana:
[Tolstoy writes] The school is held in a two-storied
stone building. Two rooms are given up to the school,
one is a cabinet of physical curiosities, and two are
occupied by the teachers. Under the roof of the porch
hangs a bell with a rope attached to the clapper; in the
vestibule downstairs stand parallel and horizontal bars,
while in the vestibule upstairs there is a joiner's
bench. The staircase and the floor of the vestibule are
covered with snow or mud; here also hangs the program.
The order of instruction is as follows: at about
eight o'clock, the teacher living in the school, a lover
of external order and the administrator of the school,
sends one of the boys, who nearly always stay overnight
with him, to ring the bell.
In the village people rise with the fires. From the
school the fires have long been observed in the windows,
and half an hour after the ringing of the bell, there
appear in the mist, in the rain, or in the oblique rays
of the autumnal sun, dark figures by twos, threes, or
singly on the mounds (the village is separated from the
school by a ravine). The necessity of herding together
has long disappeared for the pupils. A pupil no longer
requires to wait and shout: "Oh boys, let's go to
school. She has begun." He knows by this time that
"school" is neuter and he knows a few other things, and
strange to say, for that very reason, has no longer any
need of a crowd...
The children have nothing with them -- neither
reading books nor copy books. No lessons are given to
take home.
Not only do they carry nothing in their hands, but
they have nothing to carry even in their heads. They are
not obliged to remember any lesson or anything that they
were doing the day before. They are not vexed by the
thought of the impending lesson. They bring with them
nothing but their impressionable natures and their
convictions that today it will be as jolly in school as
it was yesterday. They do not think of their classes
until they have begun.
No one is ever rebuked for being late, and they
never are late, except in the case of some of the older
ones, whose fathers now and then keep them back to do
some work. In such cases they come running to school at
full speed, and all out of breath.
So long as the teacher has not yet arrived, they
gather near the porch, pushing each other off the steps,
or sliding on the frozen crust of the smooth road, while
some go to the school rooms. If it is cold, they read,
write, or play, waiting for the teacher.
The girls do not mix with the boys. When the boys
have anything to do with the girls, they never address
anyone in particular but always all collectively: "Oh,
girls, why don't you skate?" or "I guess the girls are
frozen," or "Now girls, all of you against me!" There is
only one girl, from the manor, with very great general
ability, about ten years of age, who is beginning to make
herself conspicuous among the herd. This girl alone the
boys treat as their equal and as a boy, except for a
delicate shade of politeness, condescension, and reserve.
Popular education has always and everywhere been to
me an incomprehensible phenomenon. The people want
education, and every separate individual unconsciously
seeks education. The more highly cultured class of
people -- society, the officers of the Government --
strive to transmit their knowledge and to educate the
less educated masses. One would think that such a
coincidence of necessities would lead to satisfaction
being given to both the class which furnishes the
education and the one that receives it. But the very
opposite takes place. The masses continually counteract
the efforts made for their education by society or by the
Government, as the representatives of a more highly
cultured class, so that these efforts are frequently
frustrated.
As with every conflict, so also here, it was necessary to solve the question: Which is more lawful, the resistance or the action itself? Must the resistance be broken, or the action be changed?
The question has been somehow always settled in favor of violence. But some sound reasons ought to be produced for the use of such violence. What are they? To this question Tolstoy gives the following answer. The arguments may be religious, philosophical, experimental, and historical, and then he discusses each of these kinds of arguments separately:
[Tolstoy writes] But in our time, when religious
education forms but a small part of education, the
question what good ground the school has for compelling
the young generation to receive religious instruction in
a certain fashion remains unanswered from the religious
point of view.
The philosophical arguments cannot afford a reason
for coercion.
All the philosophers, beginning with Plato and
ending with Kant, tend to this one thing, the liberation
of the school from the traditional fetters which weigh
heavily upon it. They wish to discover what it is that
man needs, and on these more or less correctly divined
needs they build up their new school.
Luther wants people to study Holy Writ in the
original, and not according to the commentaries of the
holy fathers. Bacon enjoins the study of Nature from
Nature, and not from the books of Aristotle. Rousseau
wants to teach life from life itself, as he understands
it, and not from previous experiments. Every step
forward taken by the philosophy of history consists only
in freeing the school from the idea of instructing the
younger generation in that which the elder generations
considered to be science, in favor of the idea of
instructing them in what they themselves need. This one
common and, at the same time, self-contradictory idea is
felt in the whole history of educational theories: it is
common, because all demand a greater measure of freedom
for the school; contradictory, because everybody
prescribes laws based on his own theory, and by that very
act that freedom is curtailed.
The educational experiments tend still less to
convince us of the lawfulness of compulsory education.
Not only is the experiment sad in itself, but the school
stupefies the children by distorting their mental
faculties; it tears them away from the family during the
most precious time of their development, deprives them of
the happiness of freedom, and converts the child into a
jaded, crushed being, wearing an expression of fatigue,
fear, and ennui, repeating with its lips strange words in
a strange language; and in reality the experience of
school work gives nothing besides these, for it takes
place amid conditions destroying any possible value in
the experiments.
School, so it would appear to us, ought to be a
means of education and at the same time, an experiment on
the young generation, constantly giving new results.
Only when experiment is at the foundation of school-work,
and every school is, so to speak, an educational
laboratory, will the school keep pace with the universal
progress and experiment will be able to lay firm
foundations for the science of education.
The historical arguments are as feeble as the
philosophical. This progress of life, of technical
knowledge, of science, proceeds faster that the progress
of the school, and the school therefore remains more and
more behind the social life, and becomes ever worse and
worse.
The argument that as schools have existed and are existing, therefore they are good, Tolstoy meets by describing his personal experience of schools in Marseilles, Paris and other towns in Western Europe, which brought him to the conclusion that the greater part of the people's education is acquired not at school but in life, and that free, open instruction by means of public lectures, sights, meetings, books, exhibitions, and so on, quite surpasses all school tuition.
Finally, Tolstoy addresses himself especially to Russian educationists, saying that if we are, for example, to acknowledge the existence of German schools as desirable, in spite of their defects, on the ground of historic experiment, still the question remains: On what grounds are we Russians to defend the school for the people, when no such schools yet exist with us? What historic reasons have we to declare that our schools must be the same as those of the rest of Europe?
[Tolstoy writes] What are we Russians to do at the
present moment? Shall we all come to some agreement and
take as our basis the English, French, German, or North
American view of education and any one of their methods?
Or shall we, by closely examining philosophy and
psychology discover what in general is necessary for the
development of a human soul, and for making out of the
younger generation the best men possible according to our
conception? Or shall we make use of the experience of
history -- not in imitating those forms which history has
evolved, but in comprehending those laws which humanity
has worked out through suffering? Shall we say frankly
and honestly to ourselves that we do not know and cannot
know what future generations may need but that we feel
ourselves obliged to study this need, and that we wish to
do so; that we do not wish to accuse the people of
ignorance for not accepting our education, but that we
shall accuse ourselves of ignorance and self-conceit if
we persist in educating the people according to our
ideas?
Let us cease looking upon the people's resistance to
our education as upon a hostile element, but let us
rather see in it an expression of the people's will,
which alone ought to guide us. Let us finally adopt the
view which we are so plainly told, both by the history of
educational methods and the whole history of education,
that if the educating class is to know what is good and
what is bad, the classes which receive the education must
have full power to express their dissatisfaction, or, at
least, to swerve from the education which instinctively
does not satisfy them -- that the only criterion of
educational methods is liberty.
The article ends in the following avowal:
We know that our arguments will not convince many.
We know that our fundamental convictions that the only
method of education is experiment, and its only criterion
freedom, will sound to some like trite commonplace, to
some like an indistinct abstraction, to others again like
a visionary dream. We should not have dared to disturb
the repose of the theoretical pedagogues and to express
these convictions, which are contrary to all experience,
if we had to confine ourselves to the reflections made in
this article; but we feel ourselves able to prove step by
step, and taking one fact after another, the
applicability and propriety of our convictions however
wild they may appear, and to this end alone do we devote
the publication of the periodical "Yasnaya Polyana".
The magazine "Yasnaya Polyana", which was in fact itself an interesting educational experiment, lasted for one year. Twelve numbers were issued.
The first issue began with the following appeal to the public:
[Tolstoy writes in "Yasnaya Polyana" No. 1]
Entering on a new work, I am under some fear, both for
myself and for those thoughts which have been for years
developing in me, and which I regard as true. I am
certain beforehand that many of these thoughts will turn
out to be mistaken. However carefully I have endeavored
to study the subject and have involuntarily looked upon
it from one side, I hope that my thoughts will call forth
the expression of a contrary opinion. I shall be glad to
afford room for all opinions in my magazine. Of one
thing only am I afraid -- that these opinions may be
expressed with acridity, and that the discussion of a
subject so dear and important to all as that of national
education may degenerate into sarcasms, personalities,
and journalistic polemics; and I will not say that
sarcasms and personalities could not affect me, or that
I hope to be above them. On the contrary, I confess that
I fear as much for myself as for the cause itself; I fear
being carried away by personal polemics instead of
quietly and persistently working at my subject.
I therefore beg all future opponents of my views to
express their thoughts so that I may explain myself and
substantiate my statements in those cases in which our
disagreement is caused by our not understanding one
another, and might agree with my opponents when the error
of my view is proved.
Count L. N. Tolstoy
Each issue contained one or two theoretical articles, then reports of the progress of the schools under the management of Tolstoy, bibliography, description of school libraries, accounts of donations, and a supplement in the shape of a book for reading.
The motto of the magazine was the saying: Glaubst zu schieben und wirst geschoben, that is to say, "You mean to push, but in reality it is you who are pushed."
This magazine has become a bibliographical rarity. True, Tolstoy's own principal articles have been included in the fourth volume of the full edition of his works, but besides those articles, there appeared in the magazine many different short notices, descriptions and reports of great interest for teachers in a theoretical as well as in a practical sense.
In his article "On methods of teaching to read and write," Tolstoy tries in the first place to prove that reading is not the first step in instruction, but only an intervening one.
[Tolstoy writes] Since it is not the first, then it
is not the principal one.
If we want to find the foundation, the first step in
education, why should we look for it perforce in the
rudiments instead of much deeper? Why should we stop at
one of the endless number of the instruments of education
and see in it the alpha and the omega of education, when
it is only one of the incidental, unimportant
circumstances of education?
By "Education" we do not mean merely a knowledge of
"Reading and Writing."
We see people who are well acquainted with all the
facts necessary to know for the purpose of farming, and
with a large number of interrelations of these facts,
though they can neither read nor write; or excellent
military commanders, excellent merchants, managers,
superintendents of work, master mechanics, artisans,
contractors, and people simply educated by life, who
possess a great store of information and of sound
reasoning based on that information, who can neither read
nor write. On the other hand we see those who can read
and write, and who have acquired no new information by
means of those accomplishments.
Among the reasons which cause a contradiction between the real needs of the people and the tuition imposed upon the people by the cultured classes, Tolstoy points out certain features in the historic development of educational institutions.
[Tolstoy writes] First were founded, not the lower,
but the higher schools: at first the monastic, then the
secondary, then the primary schools....The rudiments are
in this organized hierarchy of institutions the last
step, or the first from the end, and therefore the lower
school is to respond only to the exigencies of the higher
schools.
But there is also another point of view, from which
the popular school appears as an independent institution,
which is not obliged to perpetuate the imperfections of
the higher institution of learning, but which has an aim
of its own, viz., that of supplying popular education.
The school for reading and writing exists among the
people in the shape of the workshop, and, as such,
satisfies the need for those accomplishments, and reading
and writing are for the people a certain kind of art or
craft.
Having made clear the gist of this matter of writing and reading, and pointed out its place in the life of the people, Tolstoy goes on further to investigate different methods of teaching to read and write.
After having examined the defects and merits of the old fashioned methods of teaching to read letter by letter, and the method of learning by sound; after having further discussed the comical and pedantic German Lautieranschauungsunterrichtsmethode, he came to the conclusion that all methods are good and all are bad, that the talent and ability of the teacher are at the foundation of any method, and he finally addresses to the teacher the following advice:
[Tolstoy writes] Every teacher of reading must be
well grounded in the one method which has been evolved by
the people, and must further verify it by his own
experience; he must endeavor to find out the greatest
number of methods, employing them as auxiliary means;
must, by regarding every imperfection in the pupil's
comprehension, not as showing a defect in the pupil, but
a defect in his own instruction, endeavor to develop in
himself the ability of discovering new methods. Every
teacher must know that every method invented is only a
step, on which he must stand in order to go farther; he
must know that if he himself will not do it, another will
adopt that method, and will, on its basis, go farther,
and that, as the business of teaching is an art,
completeness and perfection are not obtainable, while
development and improvement are endless.
With still greater detail and clearness does Tolstoy present his educational ideas in his article "Education and Instruction".
In the first place, he states the fact that the majority of educationists, Russian and European, confuse these two ideas. Then he tries to restate the distinction between these conceptions, giving his own definitions to the three principal educational terms -- Education, Training, and Instruction.
[Tolstoy writes] Education in the broad sense of the
term is, according to our conviction, the sum total of
all those influences which develop man, give him a
broader outlook and new knowledge, children's games and
their sufferings, punishments inflicted by their parents,
books, work, study, whether compulsory or free, art,
science, life -- all these educate.
Training is the influence exercised by one man on
another for the purpose of making him adopt certain moral
habits.
Instruction is the transmission of knowledge from
one man to another (one can be instructed in chess, or
history, or boot-making). Teaching, an aspect of
instruction, is the influence exercised by one man upon
another for the purpose of leading him to acquire certain
accomplishments (to sing, to do carpentering, to dance,
to row, to recite). Instruction and teaching are means
of education when they are exercised without compulsion,
and means of training when teaching is compulsory, and
when instruction is directed in an exclusive way, i.e.,
when only those subjects are given which the teacher
regards as necessary.
There are no rights of education. I do not
acknowledge such, nor have they been acknowledged, nor
will they ever be, by the young generation under
education, which always and everywhere is set against
compulsion in education.
Education is compulsory, instruction is free. Where
lies to right to compulsion?
Where do we find the justification of any compulsion
by humanity? [To this question Tolstoy gives the
following answer:]
If such an abnormal condition as the use of force in
culture -- education -- has existed for ages, the causes
of this phenomenon must be rooted in human nature. I see
these causes -- (1) in the family, (2) in religion, (3)
in the State, and (4) in society (in the narrower sense,
which in our country embraces only the official circles
and the gentry).
While not approving of the influence of the first three sources of compulsion, Tolstoy admitted that it was intelligible.
It is difficult to hinder parents from bringing up
their children to be different from what they are
themselves; it is difficult for a believer not to strive
to bring up his child in his own faith; finally, it is
difficult to claim that Governments should not educate
the officials whom they require
But by what right does the privileged, progressive
society educate by its own standard the people alien to
itself? this can be explained by nothing but gross
egotistical error.
What is the reason of this error?
I think it is that we do not hear the voice of those
who attack us; we do not hear it, because it does not
speak in print or down from the professor's chair. But
it is the mighty voice of the people, which one must
listen to carefully in order to hear it.
Tolstoy then began the examination of the methods of this educational compulsion, i.e., those practiced in the schools from the lowest to the highest, and he found nothing cheering in them. He criticized especially the organization of our universities.
Without rejecting university instruction on principle, Tolstoy declared:
[Tolstoy writes] I can understand a university,
corresponding to its name and its fundamental idea, as a
collection of men for the purpose of their mutual
culture. Such universities, unknown to us, spring up and
exist in various corners of Russia; in the universities
themselves, in the students' clubs, people come together,
read and discuss, until at last rules establish
themselves when to meet and how to discuss. There you
have real universities! But our universities, in spite
of all the empty talk about the seeming freedom of their
structure, are institutions which, by their organization,
in no way differ from female boarding schools and cadet
academies.
Besides the absence of freedom, of independence, one
of the chief defects of our university life is its
aloofness from real life.
See how the son of a peasant learns to become a
farmer; how the sexton's son, reading in the choir,
learns to be a sexton; how the son of a Kirgiz cattle
dealer becomes a herder; he enters very early into direct
relations with life, with Nature, and with men; he learns
early, while working, to make his work productive; and he
learns, being secure on the material side of life, that
is, so far as to be sure of a piece of bread, of clothes
to wear, and of a lodging. Now look at a student, who is
torn away from home, from the family, cast into a strange
city, full of temptations for his youth, without means of
support (because the parents provide means only for bare
necessities, while all is spent on frivolity), in a
circle of companions who by their society only intensify
his defects; without guides, without an aim, having
pushed off from the old and having not yet landed at the
new. Such, with rare exceptions, is the position of a
student. From this results that which alone can result;
you have officials who are fit only for Government posts;
or professional officials, fit for society, or people
aimlessly torn away from their former surroundings, with
a spoiled youth, and finding no place for themselves in
life, so-called people with university culture --
advanced, that is, irritable, sickly Liberals.
The university is our first and our chief
educational institution. It is the first to arrogate to
itself the right of education, and it is the first, so
far as the results which it obtains indicate, to prove
the impropriety and impossibility of university
education. Only from the social point of view is it
possible to justify the fruits of the university. The
university trains not such men as humanity needs, but
such as corrupt society needs.
Tolstoy foresaw the timid objections to his radical solution of the question on the part of those fearing a change, and he answered these at once, concluding his answer with the following reply:
[Tolstoy writes] "What are we to do then? shall
there, really, be no county schools, no gymnasia, no
chairs of the history of Roman law? What will become of
humanity?" I hear.
There certainly shall be none, if the pupils do not
need them, and you are not able to make them good.
"But children do not always know what they need;
children are mistaken," and so forth, I hear.
I will not enter into this discussion. this
discussion would lead us to the question: Can man's
nature be judged by a tribunal of men? and so forth. I
do not know that, and do not take that stand; all I can
say is that if we know what to teach, you must not keep
me from teaching Russian children by force, French,
medieval genealogy, and the art of stealing. I can prove
everything as you do.
"So there will be no gymnasia and no Latin? Then
what am I going to do?" I again hear.
Don't be afraid! There will be Latin and rhetoric,
and they will exist another hundred years, simply because
the medicine is bought, so we must drink it (as a patient
said). I doubt whether the thought, which I have
expressed, perhaps indistinctly, awkwardly,
inconclusively, will become a common possession in
another hundred years; it is not likely that within a
hundred years will die those ready-made institutions,
schools, gymnasia, universities, and that within that
time will grow up freely formed institutions, having for
their basis the freedom of the learning generation.
Of course, such audacious ideas could not be accepted by educationists, who during the 1860s have been at the head of national instruction in russia. Offended science did not even deign to take such ideas seriously. In "The Collection of Criticisms Upon Tolstoy" by Zelinskiy, a book very carefully composed, there are only two serious articles devoted to the magazine "Yasnaya Polyana", and to the school of the same name. The are printed in "The Contemporary" of 1862.
To one of these, the article of E. Markov, Tolstoy replied in his magazine by an article, "the Progress and Definition of Instruction."
The gist of markov's argument, given in a resume at the end of his article, consists in an open acknowledgment of the right of compulsory education on the part of society, and its right of rejecting free instruction, after making which he proceeds to express his approval of contemporary systems of instruction. As to the school in Yasnaya Polyana, he speaks with enthusiasm of its practice but holds that it is inconsistent with the theories of its founder and guide, L.N. Tolstoy.
In his reply to Markov, Tolstoy repeats and explains what has been said by him in his preceding articles, and he comes to the conclusion that their principal difference is the fact that Markov believes in progress and he does not.
In explanation of his want of belief in progress, he says:
[Tolstoy writes] The process of progress has taken
place in all humanity from time immemorial, says the
historian who believes in progress, and he proves this
assertion by comparing, let us say, England of the year
1685 with the England of our time. Even if it were
possible to prove, by comparing Russia, france, and Italy
of our time with ancient rome, Greece, Carthage, and so
forth, that the prosperity of the modern nations is
greater than that of antiquity, I am still struck by one
incomprehensible phenomenon; they deduce a general law
for all humanity from the comparison of one small part of
European humanity in the present and the past. Progress
is a common law of humanity, they say, except for Asia,
Africa, America, and australia, except for one thousand
mission people.
We have noticed the law of progress in the dukedom
of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, with its three thousand
inhabitants. We know China, with its two hundred million
inhabitants, which overthrows our whole theory of
progress, and we do not for a moment doubt that progress
is the common law of all humanity, and that we, the
believers in that progress, are right, and those who do
not believe in it are wrong, and so we go with cannons
and guns to impress the idea of progress upon the
Chinese. Common sense, however, tells us that if the
history of the greater part of humanity, the whole so-
called East, does not confirm the law of progress, but on
the contrary, overthrows it, that law does not exist for
all humanity, but only as an article of faith for a
certain part of it.
I, like all people who are free from the
superstition of progress, observe only that humanity
lives, that the memories of the past augment as much as
they disappear; the labors of the past frequently serve
as a basis for the labors of the present, and just as
frequently as an impediment; that the well-being of
people now increases in one place, in one stratum, and in
one sense, and now diminishes; that, not matter how
desirable it would be, I cannot find any common law in
the life of humanity; and that it is as easy to
subordinate history to the idea of progress as to any
other idea or to any imaginable historical fancy.
I will say even more; I see no necessity for finding
common laws for history, independently of the
impossibility of finding them. The common eternal law is
written in the soul of each man. The law of progress, or
perfectibility, is written in the soul of each man, and
is transferred to history only through error. As long as
it remains personal, this law is fruitful and accessible
to all; when it is transferred to history, it becomes an
idle, empty prattle, leading to the justification of
every insipidity and to fatalism. Progress in general in
all humanity is an unproved fact, and does not exist for
all the Eastern nations; therefore, it is as unfounded to
say that progress is the law of humanity as it is to say
that all people are fair except the dark-complexioned
ones.
The propositions stated are developed in detail by Tolstoy in his article, but as this subject over steps the limits of our narrative, we will conclude by mentioning one more paper entitled "A Project For A General Plan of People's Schools Organization." This article contains some witty criticisms, and a readable review of the Government regulation concerning schools in 1862.
Tolstoy's general critical remarks on the regulation can be summed up thus: (1) The regulation is based upon the American system; the people are to pay school rates, and the schools are to be maintained by the Government with the sum collected. But what is good in a democratic republic may turn out very bad in a despotic state, where the law expressing the so-called "will of the people" becomes a gross invasion of the rights of the people. (2) The general inefficiency of the project follows from its inadaptability to the needs of the people, owing to entire ignorance of Russian life on the part of the author. (3) The control of popular education sanctioned by this regulation will prove an obstacle to the popular education already existing, which is freely spreading.
After having finished this brief summary of Tolstoy's opinions on education, we must give our own conclusion, which is in opposition to the conclusion of M. Markov and is this, that the practice of the school at Yasnaya Polyana does not in the least contradict Tolstoy's views, but, on the contrary, amounts to their direct application, which is accomplished with unique success.
In his educational articles of practical interest, Tolstoy gives an artistic description of several incidents in school life, a subject n which he took a warm and sincere interest, not like a stern pedant demanding obedience, but like a boy joining in the joys and sorrows of his school companions, giving them his whole soul, and sharing his great spiritual riches with them.
By putting together the incidents thus described, one sees the gigantic figure of the great educationist in all its grandeur.
It was not cold outside -- a moonless winter night with clouds in the sky. We stopped at the cross-roads; the older, third-year pupils stopped near me, asking me to accompany them farther; the younger ones looked awhile at me and then ran off down hill. The young ones had begun to study with a new teacher, and they no longer had that confidence in me that the older boys had.
"Come, let us go to the preserve," (a small forest within two hundred steps of the house), said one of them. Fedka, a small boy of ten, of a tender, impressionable, poetical, and impetuous nature, was the most persistent in his demands. Danger seemed to form his chief condition for enjoyment...
He knew that there were wolves in the forest then, and so he wanted to go to the preserve. The rest joined in, so we went, all four of us, into the wood. another boy, I shall call him Semka, a physically and morally sound lad of about twelve, nicknamed Vavilo, walked ahead and kept exchanging calls with somebody in his ringing voice. Pronka, a sickly, meek, but uncommonly talented boy, the son of a poor family -- sickly, I think, mainly on account of insufficient food -- was walking by my side.
Fedka was walking between me and Semka, talking all the time in his extremely soft voice, telling us how he had herded horses here in the summer, or saying that he was not afraid of anything, or asking, "Suppose some one were to jump out at us!" and insisting on my answering him. We did not go into the forest itself -- that would have been too terrible -- but even near the forest it was getting darker; we could hardly see the path, and the fires of the village were hidden from view.
Semka stopped and began to listen.
"Stop, boys! What is that?" he suddenly said.
We held our tongues, but we could hear nothing; still it added terror to our fear.
"Well, what should we do if one should jump out and make straight for us?" Fedka asked.
We began to talk about robbers in the Caucasus. They recalled a story of the Caucasus I had told them long ago, and I told them more stories about abreks, Cossacks, and Khadzhi Murat. Semka was strutting ahead of us, stepping broadly in his big boots, and evenly swaying his strong back. Pronka tried to walk by my side, but Fedka pushed him off the path, and Pronka, who apparently always submitted to such treatment on account of his poverty, still rushed up to my side during the most interesting passages, though sinking knee-deep in the snow.
Everybody who knows anything about peasant children has noticed that they are not accustomed to any kind of caresses -- tender words, kisses, being fondly touched with the hand, and so forth....It was for this reason that I was startled when Fedka, who was walking by my side, in the most terrible part of the story suddenly touched me lightly with his sleeve, and then grasped two of my fingers with his whole hand, and did not let them go.
The moment I was silent, Fedka begged me to proceed, and that in such an imploring tone and with so much agitation that I could not refuse.
"Don't get in my way!" he once angrily called out to Pronka, who had run on in front; he was really quite savage with him -- he had such a mingled feeling of terror and joy, as he was holding on to my finger, that he could not bear any one daring to interrupt his pleasure.
"More, more! That's fine!"
We passed the forest and were approaching the village from the other end.
"Let us go back again," all cried when the lights became visible. "Let us take another walk!"
We walked in silence, now and then sinking in the loose, untrodden snow; the white darkness seemed to be swaying before our eyes; the clouds hung low, and seemed to be piled over us -- there was no end to that whiteness over which we alone crunched through the snow; the wind rustled through the bare tops of the aspens, but we were protected from the wind behind the forest.
I finished my story by telling them that the abrek, being surrounded, began to sing songs, and then threw himself on his dagger. All were silent.
"Why did he sing a song when he was surrounded?" asked Semka
"Didn't you hear? He was getting ready to die!" Fedka replied sorrowfully.
"I think he sang a prayer," added pronka.
All agreed....
We stopped in the grove, beyond the threshing floors, at the very end of the village. Semka picked up a stick from the snow and began to strike the frozen trunk of a lime tree. The hoar frost fell from the branches upon his cap, and the lonely sound of his beating was borne through the forest.
"Lev Nikolayevich," Fedka said (I thought he wanted to say something again about the countess), "why do people learn singing? I often wonder why they really do?"...
It feels strange to me to repeat what we spoke on that evening, but I remember we said everything, I think, that there was to be said on utility and on plastic and moral beauty.
A rare happiness fell to the writer of these lines, as to Fedka, who held Tolstoy by his fingers and was rapt in ecstasy. I more than once walked with Tolstoy on the sam spot (Zakas). Listening to his tales, I have experienced the same feeling, which cannot be expressed in better words than those used by Fedka: "Go on, go on! ah, how nice!"
Once last winger [Tolstoy goes on], I forgot everything after dinner as I read Snegirev's book, and even returned to the school with the book in my hands. It was a lesson in the Russian language.
"Well, write something on a proverb!" I said
The best pupils, Fedka, Semka, and a few others, pricked up their ears.
"What do you mean by `on a proverb'? What is it? Tell us!" the questions ran.
I happened to open the book at the proverb: "He feeds with the spoon and pricks his eye with the handle."
"Now imagine," I said, "that a peasant has taken a beggar to his house and then begins to rebuke him for the good he has done him, and you will see that `he feeds with spoon and pricks his eye with the handle.'"
"But how are you going to write it?" asked Fedka and all the rest, who had pricked up their ears. They retreated, having convinced themselves that this matter was beyond their strength, and they betook themselves to the work which they had begun.
"Will you write it yourself?" one of them said to me.
Everybody was busy with his work; I took a pen and ink and began to write.
"Well," said I, "who will write it best? I am with you.
I began the story, printed in the fourth issue of the "Yasnaya Polyana" magazine, and I wrote down the first page. Every unbiased man who has the artistic sense and feels with the poorer classes will, upon reading this first page, written by me, and the following pages of the story, written by the pupils themselves, separate this page from the rest, as if he were taking a fly out of the milk; it is so false, so artificial, and so badly expressed. I must remark that in the original form it was more monstrous still, as much has been corrected, thanks to the hints given by the pupils.
Fedka kept looking up from his copy book to me, and upon meeting my eyes, he smiled, winked, and repeated: "Write, write, or I'll give it to you!" He was evidently amused to see a grown person write a theme.
Having finished his theme worse and faster than usual, he climbed on the back of my chair and began to read over my shoulders. I could not proceed; others came up to us, and I read out to them what I had written.
They did not like it, and none of them praised it. I felt ashamed, and, to soothe my literary vanity, I began to tell them the plan of what was to follow. The further I got in my story, the more enthusiastic I became; I often corrected myself, and they kept helping me out. One would say that the old man should be a magician; another would remark: "No, that won't do, he must be just a soldier; the best thing will be if he steals from him; no, that won't go with the proverb," and so forth.
All were exceedingly interested. It was evidently a new and exciting sensation for them to be present at the process of creation and to take part in it. Their judgments were all, for the most part, to the same effect, and they were just, whether they spoke of the very structure of the story or of the incidents and the characters given to the personages. Nearly all of them took part in the composition; but, from the outset, those who distinguished themselves were the positive Semka, by his marked artistic power of description, and Fedka, by the correctness of his poetical conception, and especially by the glow and rapidity of his imagination.
Their demands had so little of the accidental in them and were so definite, that more than once, after beginning a discussion, I had to give way to them. I was strongly possessed by the demands of a regular structure and of an exact correspondence of the idea of the proverb to the story; while they, on the contrary, were only concerned about the demands of artistic truth. I, for example, wanted that the peasant, who had taken the old man to his house, should himself repent of his good deed, while they regarded this as impossible and introduced a cross old woman.
I said: "The peasant was at first sorry for the old man and afterward did not like giving away the bread."
Fedka replied that that would make the story improbable. "From the first he did not obey the old woman, and would not submit later on."
"What kind of a man is he, according to you?" I asked.
"He is like Uncle Timofey," said Fedka, smiling. "He has a scanty beard, goes to church, and he has bees."
"Is he good but stubborn?" I asked.
"Yes," said Fedka, "he will not obey the old woman."
From that time the old man was brought into the hut, the work became animated. They evidently for the first time felt the charm of clothing artistic incidents in words. Semka distinguished himself more than the rest in this respect; the correctest details were poured forth one after the other. The only fault that could be found with him was that these details sketched only the actual moment, without connection with the general feeling of the story. I hardly could write their descriptions as fast as they gave them, and only asked them to wait and not forget what they had told me.
Semka seemed to see and describe that which was before his eyes; the stiff, frozen bast shoes, with the dirt oozing from them as they thawed, and the half-burned scraps into which they were shrivelled when the old woman threw them into the oven.
Fedka, on the contrary, saw only such details as brought out for him the particular feeling which he had for particular individuals. Fedka saw the snow drifting behind the peasant's leg- rags, and the expression of compassion with which the peasant said, "Lord, how it snows!" (Fedka's face even showed how the peasant said it, and besides this, he swung his hands and shook his head.) He saw the cloak, all rags and patches, and the torn shirt, under which could be seen the shrunken body of the old man, wet from the melting snow. He created the old woman, who growled, as, at the command of her husband, she took off his bast shoes, and the pitiful groan of the old man as he muttered through his teeth, "Softly, motherkin, I have sores here."
Semka needed mainly objective pictures; bast shoes, a cloak, an old man, a woman, all almost independent of one another; but Fedka had to make others feel the pity with which he was filled himself. He ran ahead of the story, telling how he would feed the old man, how the latter would fall down at night, and would later teach a boy in the field to read, so that I was obliged to ask him not to be in such a hurry and not to forget what he had said. His eyes sparkled with positive hears; his swarthy, thin little hands were clasped convulsively; he was angry with me, and he kept urging me on: "Have you written it, have you written it?" he kept asking me.
He treated all the rest despotically; he wanted to talk all the time, giving the story not as a story is told, but as it is written, that is, artistically clothing in words the sensuous pictures. thus, for example, he would not allow words to be transposed; if he once said, "I have sores on my feet," he would not permit me to say, "On my feet I have sores." His soul, now softened and irritated by the sentiment of pity, that is, of love, clothed every image in an artistic form, and denied everything that did not correspond to the idea of eternal beauty and harmony.
The moment Semka was carried away into giving disproportionate details about the lambs in the inclosure, and so forth, Fedka grew angry and said, "What a lot of bosh!" I only needed to suggest what the peasant was doing, while his wife went to the gossip, to call forth at once in Fedka's imagination a picture with lambs bleating at the inclosure, with the sighs of the old man and the delirium of the boy Seryozhka; I only needed to suggest an artificial and false picture to make him immediately remark angrily that that was not necessary.
For example, I suggested the description of the peasant's looks, to which he agreed; but to my proposition to describe what the peasant was thinking when his wife had run over to the gossip, there immediately rose before him this very way of expressing his thought, "If you got in the way of Savoska, the corpse, he would pull all your locks out!" He said this, leaning his head on his hand the while, with such a tone of fatigue and quiet gravity -- although in his usual good-natured voice -- that the boys shook with laughter.
The chief quality in every art, the feeling of measure, was developed in him to an extraordinary degree. He writhed at the suggestion of any superfluous feature, made by some one of the boys.
He directed the structure of the story so despotically, and with such right to this despotism, that the boys soon went him, and only he and Semka, who would not give in to him, though working in another direction, were left. We worked from seven to eleven o'clock; they felt neither hunger nor fatigue, and even got angry at me when I stopped writing; they undertook to relieve me in writing, but they soon gave that up, as matters would not go well.
It was then for the first time that Fedka asked my name. We laughed because he did not know.
"I know," he said, "how to call you; but how do they call you in the manor? We have such names as Fokanychev, Zyabrev, Yermilin."
I told him.
"Are we going to print it?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Then we shall have to print work by Makarov, Morozov, and Tolstoy."
He was agitated for a long time and could not sleep and I cannot express the feeling of agitation, joy, fear, and almost regret, which I experienced during that evening. I felt that with that day a new world of enjoyment and suffering was opened up to him -- the world of art; I thought that I had received and insight into what no one has a right to see -- the germination of the mysterious flower of poetry.
I felt both dread and joy, like the seeker after the treasure who suddenly sees the flower of the fern -- I felt joy, because suddenly and quite unexpectedly there was revealed to me that stone of the philosophers which I had vainly been trying to find for two years -- the art of teaching the expression of thought; and dread, because this art made new demands -- brought with it a whole world of desires, which stood in no relation to the surroundings of the pupils, as I thought in the first moment. There was no mistaking. It was not an accident, but a conscious creation....
I gave up the lesson, because I was to much agitated.
"What is the matter with you? You are so pale -- are you ill?" my companion asked me. Indeed, only two or three times in my life have I experienced such a strong sensation as on that evening, and for a long time I was unable to render an account to myself of what I was experiencing. I distinctly felt that I had criminally looked through a glass hive at the work of the bees, concealed from the gaze of mortal man; it seemed to me that I had vaguely felt something like repentance for an act of sacrilege,...and at the same time I was happy as a man must be happy who beholds that which no one has beheld before.
Tolstoy writes: I had intended to explain in the first lesson in what way russia differed from other countries, where its frontiers were, the nature of the structure of its government, then to say who was the present ruler, and how and when the Emperor ascended the throne.
"Teacher: Where do we live, in what country?"
"A Pupil: In Yasnaya Polyana."
"Another Pupil: In the field."
"Teacher: No, in what country is Yasnaya Polyana and the Government of Tula?"
"Pupil: the Government of Tula is seventeen versts from us. Where is it? Government is a Government, and that is all there is to say about it."
"Teacher: No. Tula is the capital of the Government, but a Government is something different. Well, what country is it?"
"Pupil (who has learned some geography before): The earth is round like a ball."
By means of questions as to what country a German, whom they knew, had lived in before and where they would get if they were to keep traveling all the time in one direction, the pupils were led up to answer they that lived in russia. Some, however, replied to the question where we should get if we traveled all the time in one direction, that we should get nowhere. Others said that we should get to the end of the world.
"Teacher (repeating the pupil's answer): You said that we should come to some other countries; where will Russia end and other countries begin?"
"Pupil: Where the Germans begin."
"Teacher: So, if you meet Gustav Ivanovich and Karl Fedorovich in Tula, you will say that the Germans have begun and that there is a new country?"
"Pupil: No, when the Germans begin thick."
"Teacher: No, there are places in Russia where the Germans are thick. Ivan Fomich is from one of them, and yet that is still russia. Why is it so?"
Silence.
"Teacher: Because they obey the same laws with the Russians."
"Pupil: One law? How so? The Germans don't come to our church and they eat meat on fast-days."
"Teacher: I do not mean that kind of law, but they obey one Tsar."
"Pupil (skeptical Semka): That is funny. Why have they a different law, and yet obey the Tsar?"
The teacher feels the need of explaining what a law is, and so he asks what is meant by "obeying a law," or "being under one law."
"Girl (independent manorial girl, hurriedly and timidly): To accept the law means `to get married.'"
The pupils look inquiringly at the teacher. The teacher begins to explain that the law consists in putting a man in jail and in punishing him for stealing or killing.
"Skeptic Semka: And have not the Germans such a law?"
"Teacher: There are also laws with us about the gentry, the peasants, the merchants, the clergy (the word `clergy' perplexes them)."
"Skeptic Semka: And have not the Germans such a law?"
"Teacher: In some countries there are such laws, and in others there are not. We have a Russian Tsar, and in the German countries there is a German Tsar."
This answer satisfies all the people and even skeptical Semka.
Thinking it was now time to pass on to explain what is meant by the classes, the teacher asks them what classes of society they know. the pupils begin to enumerate them: the gentry, the peasants, the popes, the soldiers. "Any more?" asks the teacher. "The manorial servants, the burghers, the samovar-makers." The teacher asks them to distinguish these classes.
"Pupils: The peasants plough, the manorial servants serve their masters, the merchants trade, the soldiers serve, the samovar-makers get the samovars ready, the popes serve the mass, the gentry do nothing..."
Then in the same order and under similar difficulties there follows an explanation of the idea of "Classes of Society," "frontiers," and other terms applied to the State.
The lesson lasts about two hours. The teacher is convinced that the pupils have retained a great deal of what has been said, and he continues his subsequent lessons in the same strain, convincing himself only much later that his method was wrong, and that all that he has been doing has been the merest nonsense.
"The holding of this class has remained a memorable event in my life, [says Tolstoy]. I shall never forget it. The children had long been promised that I should tell them history, going backward, while another teacher would begin from the beginning, so that we should finally meet. My evening scholars had left me, and I came to the class of Russian history. They were talking about Svyatoslav. They felt dull. On a tall bench sat in a row, as they always put themselves, three peasant girls, with their heads tied with kerchiefs. One was asleep. Mishka pushed me. "Look there, our cuckoos are sitting there -- one is asleep." And they were like cuckoos!
"You had better tell us from the end," said some one, and all got up.
I sat down and began to talk. As always, the hubbub, the groans, the tussling, lasted about two minutes. Some were crawling under the table, some on the table, some under the benches, and on their neighbors' shoulders and knees, till at last all was silent. I began with Aleksandr I, told them of the French Revolution, of Napoleon's successes, of his seizing the government, and of the war which ended in the peace of Tilsit. The moment we reached Russia there were heard sounds and words expressing lively interest on all sides.
"Well, is he going to conquer us, too?"
"Never mind, Aleksandr will give it to him!" said some one who knew about Aleksandr, but I had to disappoint them -- the time had not yet come for that -- and they felt uncomfortable when they heard that the Tsar's sister was spoken of as a bride for Napoleon, and that aleksandr spoke with him on the bridge, as if he was his equal.
"Just wait!" exclaimed Petka, with a threatening gesture.
"Go on and tell us!"
When Aleksandr declined to submit to him, that is, when Aleksandr declared war, all expressed their approbation. When Napoleon came against us at the head of twelve nations and stirred up the Germans and Poland, their hearts sank from agitation.
A German, a friend of mine, was standing in the room.
"Ah, you were against us, too," said Petka (the best storyteller).
"Keep quiet!" cried the others.
The retreat of our army tortured my audience, and on all sides were asked questions why? and curses were heaped on Kutuzov and Barclay.
"Your Kutuzov is no good!"
"Just wait," said another.
"Well, did he surrender?" asked a third.
When we reached the battle of Borodino, and when in the end I was obliged to say that we did not gain a victory, I was sorry for them -- it was evident that I gave them all a terrible blow.
"Though our side did not win, theirs did not either!"
When Napoleon came to Moscow and was waiting for the keys of the city and for submission, there was a burst of protest, as they had thought they were unconquerable. The conflagration of Moscow was, naturally, approved of by all. Then came the victory, Napoleon's retreat.
"When he came out of Moscow, Kutuzov rushed after him and went to fight him," I said.
"He made him rear!" Fedka corrected me.
Fedka, red in his face, was sitting opposite me, and was bending his thin, tawny fingers with excitement. That is his habit. The moment he said this, the whole room groaned with pride and delight. A little fellow in the back row was being badly squeezed, but nobody paid any attention.
"That's better! There, take the keys now!" and so forth.
Then I continued, describing our pursuit of the French. It pained the children to hear that some one was too late at Berezina, and that we let them pass; Petka even groaned with pain.
"I should have shot him dead for being late."
Here we even had some pity for the frozen Frenchmen. Then, when we crossed the border and the Germans, who had been against us, joined us, some one remembered the German who was standing in the room.
"How is that? At first you are against us, and when the power is losing, you are with us!" and suddenly all rose and shouted at the German, so that the noise could be heard in the street. When they quieted down I went on, telling them about our following up Napoleon as far as Paris, placing the real king on the throne, celebrating our victory, and feasting. But the recollection of the Crimean War spoiled the whole thing.
"Just wait," said Petka, shaking his fist; "let me grow up and I will show them!"
If we had at that moment had a chance at the Shevardino redoubt and Mount Malakhov, we should certainly have taken them back.
It was late when I ended. As a rule the children are asleep at that time. No one was sleeping, and the eyes of the little cuckoos were burning. Just as I got up, Taraska crawled out from underneath my chair, to my great astonishment, and look vivaciously, and, at the same time, seriously at me.
"How did you get down there?"
"He was there all the time," some one said.
"There was no need to ask him whether he had understood; you could see that by his face.
"Well, are you going to tell about it?" I asked.
"I?" He thought a while. "I will tell the whole thing."
"I will tell it at home."
"So will I."
"And I."
"Is that all?"
"Yes."
All flew down under the staircase, some promising to give it to the Frenchmen, others scolding the German, and others repeating how Kutuzov had made him "rear".
"Sie haben ganz Russisch erzachlt," the German who had been hooted said to me in the evening. "You ought to hear how they tell the story in our country! You said nothing about the German struggle for freedom."
I fully agreed with him that my narrative was not history but a fanciful tale to rouse the national sentiment.
Consequently, as a study of history, this attempt was even less successful than the first.
* * * * * * * *
To give a full picture of Tolstoy as a schoolmaster, we must add his views on the teaching of music. He gives a concise summary of his conclusions in four short paragraphs.
[Tolstoy writes] From the small experience which I have
had in teaching music, I have become convinced:
(1) That the method which consists in writing the
sounds down in figures is the most convenient.
(2) That teaching time independently of sound is
again the most convenient method.
(3) That, in order that musical instruction should
produce permanent effect and be cheerfully received, it
is necessary from the very outset to teach the art and
not the skill of singing and playing. Young ladies may
be made to play Burgmuner's exercises, but the children
of the people it is better not to teach at all than to
teach mechanically.
(4) That the aim of musical instruction must consist
in giving the pupils that knowledge of the common laws of
music which we possess, but by no means in transmitting
that false taste which is developed in us.
Drawing occupied a conspicuous place in the school course, but Tolstoy did not teach it himself, as he did not think he was competent, and this task was undertaken by a fellow teacher.
In the spring of 1862, Tolstoy was very tired after his work as Peace Mediator, and at the school, and having some fear of consumption, he resolved to try the Koumiss treatment.
Accompanied by his man-servant Aleksey and two schoolboys, he went to the province of Samara in the middle of May [1862].
He wrote from Moscow to his aunt Tatyana, informing her that he and his companions were all well and giving her certain advice and messages in connection with the school.
They went by rail to Tver and then on by a steamer, which was to take them down the river Volga to Samara.
On the voyage, Tolstoy probably was in that very happy mood which is so often enjoyed by all travellers upon the Volga. The great river in its spring overflow, the soft murmur of the steamer as it moved, the fascinating spring nights with their starlit skies, the mirror-like river, the lights of the shore and the vessel, the pilgrims, monks, Tartars, and other passengers, who, in spite of the great variety of types, conditions, nationalities, and religions, bear on them a distinctive Great Russian cachet; possibly thoughts of the great historic past of the river and its banks -- all these make an incomparably gladdening and softening impression and bring with them many thoughts and dreams.
Tolstoy probably had some similar sensations, for on May 20th [1862] he wrote in his diary:
[Tolstoy writes] On board steamer. It seems as if
I were again awakening to life and to the understanding
of it. The thought as to the absurdity of progress
pursues me. With the intelligent and the silly, with old
men and with children, I keep discussing this one thing.
On his way, Tolstoy stopped with his relation Vladimir Ivanovich Yuskhov in Kazan.
Then, from Samara itself, he wrote to his aunt:
[Tolstoy writes] May 27, 1862...I have had a
splendid journey; I like the locality very much; my
health is better, i.e., I cough less. Aleksey and the
boys are alive and well, as you may tell their
parents..."
He next wrote from the place where he was undergoing his treatment:
[Tolstoy writes] June 28, 1862...Aleksey and myself have
become stouter, especially aleksey, but we cough a
little, and again especially Aleksey. We are living in
a Kibitka [a Tartar tent]. I found my friend Stolipin
was an Ataman [Cossack commander] at Uralsk, where I
visited him. I brought from there a clerk, but I do not
dictate or write much. Laziness quite overpowers one
when taking koumiss. In a fortnight I intend returning
home. I am troubled by want of news in these wilds, and
also by the consciousness that I am dreadfully behindhand
with the publication of the journal. I kiss your hands.
Please write in detail about Seryozha, Masha, the
student, whom I greet.
Enclosed are letters from the boys to their
teachers.
While he was spending a peaceful time in the Bashkir Steppes, an unexpected event took place in the school at Yasnaya Polyana.
There can be no doubt that the powerful preaching of freedom of speech and action at the school could not but attract the attention of the authorities, and Yasnaya Polyana was denounced to those whom it concerned as a center of criminal revolutionary propaganda. In the summer of 1862, the police appeared in the school and made a perquisition.
A full description of this is to be found in the reminiscences of E. Markov in his article printed in "The European Messenger."
[E. Markov writes] I cannot help mentioning a
characteristic episode, known only to a very few persons,
but which had been the cause of Tolstoy's giving up
educational work. As a peace mediator of the first
elected group, Tolstoy warmly sympathized with the
liberation of the serfs, and he naturally acted in a
direction which provoked a large majority of landowners
against him. He has received a number of threatening
letters; they threatened to knock him down or shoot him
in a duel; and he has been denounced to the authorities.
It so happened that just at the very time when the
magazine "Yasnaya Polyana" was started by Tolstoy,
proclamations of different revolutionary parties made
their appearance in St. Petersburg, and the police were
actively engaged searching for the hidden printing press.
Some one of Tolstoy's political enemies craftily
insinuated that certain secret leaflets containing
appeals for cooperation could be printed only in the
printing office of a magazine published -- horrible
dictu! -- not in a town, as all respectable people would
have it done, but in the country. In fabricating this,
they only omitted to give a glance at the title-page,
where it was stated in big type that the review was
published in the most respectable printing office of M.
N. Katkov in Moscow. The denunciation, nevertheless,
created a real storm.
In the absence of Tolstoy, his house was being kept
by his elderly aunt, and his sister, also married to a
Tolstoy, was staying there with her children on a visit.
Our common friend, G. A. Auerbach, and myself were
spending the summer with our families at a distance of
about five versts from Yasnaya Polyana, in a house let to
us by a landowner in the same Raspberry Abattis where
Yasnaya Polyana was. One early morning a messenger from
Yasnaya Polyana arrived. We were requested to come as
soon as possible on important business. Auerbach and I
jumped into a wagonette and hurried on as hard as we
could. On our entering the courtyard, we were faced with
a real invasion; there were post chaises drawn by teams
of three horses with their bells, conveyances of local
inhabitants, the head of the police district, the
commissary of rural police, local policemen, witnesses,
and in addition to all this -- gendarmes. The colonel of
the gendarmes arrived with jingling and bustle at the
head of this fearful expedition into Tolstoy's peaceful
abode, to the great consternation of the village people.
After some difficulty, we succeeded in entering the
house. The poor ladies were almost fainting. Everywhere
there were watchmen, everything was opened, shifted
about, and turned upside down -- tables, drawers,
wardrobes, chests of drawers, boxes, caskets, etc.
Crowbars were used in the stables to lift the floors; the
ponds in the park were searched by means of nets in order
to catch the criminal printing press, instead of which
only innocent carp and crabs made their appearance.
It need hardly be said that in the first place, the
unfortunate school had been turned upside down; but,
finding nothing there, the searchers went in the same
noisy, bustling procession, with sounding bells, to pay
a visit apparently to all the seventeen schools of the
peace districts, everywhere turning over tables and
ransacking cupboards, carrying off exercise books and
school manuals, putting teachers under arrest, and
creating the wildest conjectures in the heads of the
peasants, who were generally unfavorable to schools. [E.
Makarov, "The Living Soul in School: Thoughts and
Reminiscences of An Old Educationalist," "Messenger of
Europe," p. 584, February 1900.]
Prince D. D. Obolenskiy speaks of the same incident in his reminiscences, with the addition of some interesting details:
[Prince D. D. Obolenskiy writes] The school of
Yasnaya Polyana was getting on splendidly. But as most
of the school teachers were students, the authorities did
not very much favor the institution and suspected that
there must be something politically unsound in Yasnaya
Polyana. Even an officer of the gendarmes called, but of
course could not find anything, for there was nothing to
find. Only in one room in the house of Yasnaya Polyana,
which was converted into a schoolroom, the attention of
the officer was attracted by a photographic apparatus.
In 1862 this was still a novelty, especially in the
provinces and villages. "What is that?" sternly inquired
the officer. "Whose photos are taken here?" The
students, of course, did not like his visit, and one of
them said for fun, "Kergen's, from nature." "How
Kergen?" inquired the officer. But the laughter
explained to him that it was a joke, and he left the
place biting his lips. ["Sketches and Reminiscences by
Prince D. D. Obolenskiy," "The Russian Archive, Book X,
1894.]
Zakharyin Yakunin Tells the following in his "Reminiscences of the Countess A. A. Tolstaya:
[Zakharyin Yakunin writes] Relating to her this
humiliating incident, Tolstoy added: "I often say to
myself, what a very lucky thing it is that I was not at
home! If I had been, I should by this time have been
tried for murder." It is easy to explain these strong
words used by Tolstoy forty-two years ago, if one
remembers the great shock suffered by his dearest friends
at the time -- his aunt and his sister. It is enough to
say that the Police Commissioner of Tula, Kobelyatskiy,
gave permission to Tolstoy's sister to leave the study
for the drawing room and then to go to bed only after he
had read before her, and in the presence of two
gendarmes, all those intimate letters which we mentioned
in their place, as well as Tolstoy's diary, and
everything Tolstoy had written and kept hidden from all
since the age of sixteen...
The owner of Yasnaya Polyana did not wish to leave
such unnecessary harshness unpunished, so he cut short
his medical treatment and went home. He wrote to
Countess A. A. Tolstaya immediately upon receiving news
of the police invasion and asked her to communicate all
the details of the affair to those in power who knew him
well and on whose protection he could rely, i.e., to
Count B. A. Perovskiy, Countess H. D. Bludova, and
others. What Tolstoy requested was not the punishment of
those who committed the outrage, but the restoration of
his good name in the eyes of the peasants around him and
security against similar incidents in the future.
This affair I positively do not wish to and cannot
leave alone," he wrote; "all the employment in which I
had found happiness and peace is spoiled. Auntie is so
ill from fright that she will probably not recover. The
people look upon me no longer as an honest man -- an
opinion, on their part, which I have earned during many
years -- but as a criminal, an incendiary, or a coiner,
who has escaped merely owing to his slyness...."
"Ah, friend! you have been caught...you needn't talk
to us any more about honesty and justice -- you have
almost been handcuffed yourself."
"As to the landowners, it goes without saying there
is one outburst of delight. Please tell me at once,
after consulting Perovskiy or Aleksey Tolstoy, or whom
you like, how I am to write and to transmit my letter to
the Emperor. I have no other choice than either to
receive a satisfaction as public as the insult (it is too
late for any redress), or else to expatriate myself, upon
which I have firmly decided. To Herzen I will not go;
Herzen has his own way, and I have mine. Nor will
conceal matters, but will loudly proclaim that I am
selling my estate in order to leave Russia, where it is
impossible to know for one minute what have to expect."
It is a long letter written on eight large pages.
In forming her at the end that the colonel of gendarmes
on leaving had threatened Yasnaya Polyana with a new
search till he should find out "what was hidden," Tolstoy
added:
"Loaded pistols are in my room, and I am waiting to
see how all this will end."
I remember Tolstoy telling me that he felt extremely
hurt by this meddling of the police in his affairs, the
more so as the visit and the search of the police were
made during his absence. He made up his mind to complain
of it to the Emperor Aleksandr II, and at the latter's
visit to Moscow, when he met him in the Aleksandrovsk
Garden, he personally handed him a petition. The Emperor
received his petition, and I believe sent one of his
adjutants to apologize.
But the authorities were far from pacified, and a correspondence between the Ministers of the Interior and of Instruction ensued on the subject of the review "Yasnaya Polyana." We quote extracts from this correspondence printed in the reminiscences of Usov:
[Usov writes] The Minister of Interior informed the
Minister of Instruction on October 3, 1862:
The careful reading of the educational review
"Yasnaya Polyana, edited by Count Tolstoy, leads to the
conclusion that this review, in preaching new methods of
tuition and principles of popular schools, frequently
spreads ideas which, besides being incorrect, are
injurious in their teaching. Without entering into a
full examination of the doctrines of the review, and
without pointing out any particular articles or
expressions -- which, however, could be easily done -- I
consider it necessary to draw the attention of your
Excellency to the general tendency and spirit of the
review, which very often attacks the fundamental rules of
religion and morality. The continuation of the review in
the same spirit must, in my opinion, be considered the
more dangerous as its editor is a man of remarkable and
one may say even a fascinating talent, who cannot be
suspected to be a criminal or an unprincipled man. The
evil lies in the sophistry and eccentricity of his
convictions, which, being expounded with extraordinary
eloquence, amy carry away inexperienced teachers in this
direction, and thus give a wrong turn to popular
education. I have the honor to inform you of this,
hoping that you may consider it useful to draw the
special attention of the censor to this publication.
Having received this report, the Minister of Instruction issued an order for the examination of all the printed books of the review "Yasnaya Polyana, and, on October 24th of the same year [1862], informed the Minister of the Interior that in accordance with the examination made by his subordinates, and the report presented to him, he saw nothing dangerous or contrary to religion in the review "Yasnaya Polyana." One only came at times across extreme views upon the subject of education, which might very well be criticized in scientific educational reviews, but not forbidden by the censor.
[Minister of Public Instruction writes, 1862] On
the whole, I must say that Count Tolstoy's work as an
educationist deserves full respect, and the Minister of
Public Instruction is bound to help him and give him
encouragement, even though not sharing all his views,
which, after maturer consideration, he will probably give
up himself. [E. Solovev, "Leo tolstoy: His Life and
Literary Activity," p. 73. Published by Pavlenkov, St.
Petersburg, 1897.]
The liberal Ministry of Public Instruction was mistaken. Tolstoy did not give up his ideas; but all those attacks had prevented the further development of his school work in Yasnaya Polyana. CHAPTER 16
Notwithstanding the apparent success of his educational work, Tolstoy could not be entirely satisfied with it; however grand the building which he had so cleverly planned, he was not sure of the firmness of its foundation. For him, this foundation was non- existent. His analytical brain prevented him from resting on unstable foundations, and a really firm one he had not found.
This dissatisfaction was expressed in his "Confession" in the following words in reference to this period:
[Tolstoy writes] I believed that I had found a
solution abroad, and armed with that conviction, I
returned to Russia the same year in which the peasants
were freed from serfdom, and accepting the office of a
country magistrate or arbitrator, I began to teach the
uneducated people in the schools, and the educated
classes by means of the journals which I published.
Things seemed to be going on well, but I felt that my
mind was not in a normal state, and that a change was
near. I might then perhaps have come to that state of
absolute despair to which I brought fifteen years later,
if it had not been for a new experience in life which
promised me safety -- the home life of a family man. For
a year I occupied myself with my duties as a arbitrator,
with the schools, and with my newspaper, and my work
became so involved that I was harassed to death; my
arbitration was one continual struggle; what to do in the
schools became less and less clear, and my newspaper
shuffling more and more repugnant to me. It was always
the same thing, trying to teach without knowing how or
what. So that I fell ill, more with mental than physical
sickness, gave up everything, and started for the steppes
to breathe a fresher air, to drink mare's milk and live
a mere animal life.
Soon after my return, I married.
The following incident in the life of Tolstoy took place about the same time:
Still a passionate gambler, he often fell victim to his own excesses. thus in the beginning of 1862, tolstoy lost 1,000 rubles in a game of billiards to Katkov, the well-known publicist and editor of "Moscow News."
He was unable to meet this debt and in lieu of payment gave his unfinished novel "The Cossacks" to be printed in the magazine, the "Russian Messenger", published by Katkov himself. It appeared in January 1863 in its unfinished shape, and in consequence of disagreeable recollections connected with it, Tolstoy gave it up and never finished the story.
Being informed of this incident by Botkin, Turgenev wrote about it to Fet:
[Turgenev writes] Tolstoy has written to Botkin that
he played against luck in Moscow and got from Katkov
1,000 rubles as a deposit for his Caucasian novel. May
God grant he returns to his true work, if even in this
manner. His "Childhood" and "Youth" have appeared in an
English translation, and it seems they are popular. I
asked a friend of mine to write an article on it in the
"Revue des Deux Mondes". One ought to have intercourse
with the people, but to long for it like a woman who is
enceinte is ridiculous.
At that time Tolstoy used very often to visit the house of Dr. Bers, with whom he was to be more closely connected by family ties.
We were still little girls [said the Countess
Tolstaya to the biographer Loewenfeld] when Tolstoy first
visited our house. He was then already a well-known
writer and lived in Moscow in a gay, noisy style. One
day Tolstoy rushed into our room and joyfully informed us
that he had just sold his "Cossacks" to Katkov for a
thousand rubles. We thought the price very low. Then he
explained that he had to do it; that he had lost that sum
of money at a game of "China billiards," and that it was
for him a matter of honor to settle the debt immediately.
He intended to write the second part of "The Cossacks,"
he has never done it. His news so much upset us little
girls that we cried, walking up and down the room.
About this time, Tolstoy again became friendly with Fet, the estrangement from whom had been the result of the quarrel with Turgenev. Of this renewal of their friendly relations, Fet speak thus:
[Fet writes] If my memory -- which keeps correctly
not only events of importance in my life, but even the
precise words used on any odd occasion -- did not retain
the circumstances of our reconciliation with Tolstoy
after his ill-tempered postscript, it only proves that
his anger against me was like a hailstorm in July, which
was bound to melt by itself. Yet I suppose it did not
occur without Borisov's help. However this may be,
Tolstoy again appeared on our horizon and with the
enthusiasm peculiar to him began to speak of his
friendship with the family of Dr. Bers.
Having accepted the offer of the Count to introduce
me to the Bers family, I met the doctor, a polite and
well-mannered old man, and a beautiful, distinguished
looking brunette, his wife, who was evidently the ruler
of the household. I refrain from describing the three
young ladies, the youngest of whom possessed a beautiful
contralto voice. Notwithstanding the careful supervision
of their mother and their perfect modesty, they all
possessed the charm which the French call du chien. The
dinner table and the dinner of the domineering hostess
were irreproachable." [A. Fet, My Reminiscences", Vol.
I]
Of the attitude of Tolstoy to the bers family and his gradual preparation for the marriage we learn from a private letter of Tolstoy's sister-in-law:
[Tatyana Bers writes] His relations with our house
are of long standing: our grandfather Islenev and
Tolstoy's father were neighboring landowners as well as
friends. Their families had been in constant
communication, and it is through this that my mother and
Tolstoy were like sister and brother in their childhood.
He used to call on us when he was an officer. My mother
was then already married and on very friendly terms with
Tolstoy's sister, and at her house as a child I often met
Tolstoy. He used to get up all sorts of games with his
nieces and myself. I was about ten at that time, and I
have but little recollection of him. When he returned
from abroad in the year of his marriage, he had not seen
us for several years, and coming to Pokrovskoye (near
Moscow), he found my two elder sisters already grown up.
He brought with him a teacher, Keller, from aborad, and
engaged a few more teachers in Moscow for his school,
which occupied his attention very much.
He almost always came on foot to Pokrovskoye (12
versts). We went out with him for long walks. He took
great interest in our life and became very intimate with
us. Once we -- my mother and we three sisters -- went
for a fortnight to grandfather's country place in the
province of Tula, of course driving, and he joined our
company. On the way we called at Yasnaya Polyana. He
lived with his aunt Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya and
his sister Marie, who were the ladies that my mother
stopped with. The next day a picnic was arranged at
Yasnaya Polyana, in the coppice, with the families of
Auerbach and Markov. Haymaking was going on in the
abatis, and we all climbed up a haystack. After this,
Tolstoy followed us to "Tvitzi," my grandfather's
property, and there, at the card-table, occurred the
declaration in "primary letters," as described in "Anna
Karenina." In September we moved to Moscow, where he too
followed, and on the 17th of the month the intended
wedding was made known in Moscow. During the whole of
his stay in Moscow he was everywhere and always lively,
gay, and witty -- he was like a volcano throwing out
sacred sparks and fire. I remember him often at the
piano; he would bring music, rehearsed the cherubic song
of Bornianskiy with us, and many other songs. He
accompanied me every day and called me Mme. Viardot,
urging me to be always singing.
This is how Countess Tolstaya herself tells about her wedding, in a conversation with Loewenfeld. We amplify and correct the narrative which we heard from the Countess:
[Sonya Tolstaya says] The Count visited our house
constantly at that time. We thought he was courting our
elder sister, and my father was perfectly sure of it
down to the last minute, when Tolstoy asked him for my
hand. This was in 1862. We went with our mother in
August to visit our grandfather via Yasnaya Polyana. My
mother wanted to call on tolstoy's sister, and we, the
three sisters and our younger brother, therefore remained
for a few days there. Nobody was astonished at the
Count's attention to us, our acquaintance being, as I
have told you, of long standing, and the Count had always
been very kind to us. "Tvitzi," our grandfather's
property, or rather that of his wife, nee Isleneva -- for
his own land he lost by card-playing -- was fifty versts
from Yasnaya Polyana. A few days later Tolstoy arrived
and, in a word, here took place a scene similar to that
described in "Anna Karenina," when Levin made his love
declaration in "primary letters," and Kitty guessed it at
once. Up to the present, said the Countess with a smile,
proving that the mere recollection of it caused her
pleasure, I cannot understand how I made out the meaning
of the letters then. It must be true that souls attuned
to one another give out the same sound even as do equally
tuned chords."
The sentence exchanged by Tolstoy and the lady who became his wife, which had been written only in primary letters, were the following:
I. y. f. e. a. f. i. a. t. m. a. y. s. L. Y. a. T. m. d.
i. This meant: "In your family exists a false idea as
to me and your sister Liza. You and Tanichka must
destroy it."
The Countess guessed the sentence and nodded affirmatively. Then he wrote:
Y. y. a. d. f. h. r. m . t. v. o. m. a. a. a. t. i. o.
h., which meant: "Your youth and desire for happiness
remind me too vividly of my advanced age and the
impossibility of happiness."
Nothing more was said between them, but they understood and were sure of one another.
They went to Moscow, whither Tolstoy followed them. He lived in town, and the family of bers were generally in Pokrovskoye- Glebovo, twelve versts from Moscow, where they had lived every summer for twenty years. Tolstoy was their daily visitor. All in the house were perfectly sure that he was going to propose to the elder daughter. But on September 17th [1862], the Saint's Day of Sofya Andreyevna, Tolstoy handed her a letter in which he made her a proposal of marriage. Of course this was joyfully accepted by her; but her father was displeased; he did not like to give the younger daughter in marriage before the elder one, as it was against old customs, and he at first refused his consent. But the persistence of Tolstoy and the firmness of Sofya Andreyevna induced him to yield.
In Tolstoy's diary we find the following vivid reflections of these events. After one of the visits to the family Bers, he wrote down on August 23rd [1862]:
[Tolstoy writes] I am afraid of myself. What if it
is only the desire to love, but not love? I try to look
only at her weak side, and yet I love.
At the same time he felt the loneliness of his public life.
[Tolstoy writes] I got up in good health, with an
especially clear head; my writing came easily, but the
subject matter is poor. Then I felt so sad as I have not
for long. I have no friends, none. I am alone. There
were friends when I served Mammon, and there are none
when I serve the truth."
At last, on August 26th [1862] he wrote:
[Tolstoy writes] I went to the Bers's at Pokrovskoye
on foot. I felt at peace, comfortable. Sonya gave me a
story to read. What energy of truth and simplicity! She
is troubled with its indefiniteness. I read it all
without agitation, without any symptoms of jealousy or
envy, but the words "of excessively unattractive
appearance and inconstancy of views" hit me splendidly.
I consoled myself by the thought that it was not about
me.
Unfortunately this story was never given to the world; it was destroyed by the author.
On August 28th [1862], his birthday, when he was thirty-four years old, we once more see in his diary marks of hesitation, self- accusation, and a struggle.
[Tolstoy writes] I got up in the usual sadness. I
have planned a society for apprentices. A sweet,
quieting night. You ugly face, don't think of marriage;
your calling is of another kind, and much has been given
for it.
But want of family happiness got the upper hand, and the desire of love turned at last into real passionate love, which knew no bars whatever. And yet notwithstanding the power of this passion, Tolstoy here too displayed his honesty and love of truth. After having already made his proposal and been accepted, he handed to his betrothed all the diaries of his bachelor days, with all his expressions of self-reproach and his perfectly sincere description of his youthful escapades, and the excesses and moral conflicts which he had gone through.
The reading of the diary was blow which caused deep suffering to the young girl, who had seen in her hero the ideal of all virtues. The suffering was so great and the struggle she went through so hard that at times she hesitated and wondered whether she should not sever the link. But love swept away all hesitation, and after nights of weeping she returned him his diary with a look in which he read forgiveness and a stronger and still more courageous love than before.
The wedding was fixed for a very early date, the end of the week following the formal proposal -- September 23rd [1862].
The marriage took place at the Kremlin in the Court church, and immediately after it the newly married couple drove away in a dormeuse to Yasnaya Polyana, where they were met by Tolstoy's brother and his aunt tatyana Aleksandrovna.
The brother of Countess Tolstaya, S. A. bers, in his reminiscences thus describes his sister.
[S. A. Bers (Sonya's brother) writes] My late father
did not approve of schools for girls, so that Tolstoy's
wife was brought up at home, but she went through an
examination and received the diploma of a teacher. While
a girl she kept her diary, tried to write stories, and
showed some talent for painting. [S. A. Bers,
"Reminiscences of Count L. N. Tolstoy", p13]
Soon after his marriage, Tolstoy wrote to Fet:
[Tolstoy writes] Fetoushka, Dear Old Fellow -- I
have been married for two weeks and am happy and a new,
quite new man. I wished to come to see you, but I cannot
manage it. When shall I see you? Having come to myself,
I value you very much indeed, and there is between us too
much in common and unforgettable -- Nikolenka and much
besides. Come to make my acquaintance. I kiss Marya
Petrovna's hands. Goodby dear friend. I embrace you
with all my heart. [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences"]
With his marriage, Tolstoy entered upon a new phase of life, the family phase, "yet unknown to him, but promising salvation," as he says in his "Confession". We shall see in our further narrative how far these expectations of Tolstoy were justified. The spirit of analysis did not spare even this harbor of salvation and destroyed this allusion also. But all-powerful reason lifted him a step higher. In the next volume we hope to peep into this mysterious process so far as is possible.
During this period Tolstoy wrote, besides those already mentioned, the following books: The Snowstorm; The Recollections of a billiard-Marker; Two Hussars; Family Happiness; and Polikushka; and he also began a new story entitled The Cloth- Measurer.
"The Snowstorm" presents a winter landscape. While reading it, you not only see before you the storm, the snowbound road and the wandering drivers with their vehicles, but you hear all the sounds of the storm, and feel in the elements a kind of soft, evanescent life.
In the "Recollections of a Billiard-Marker" is presented a pure, sweet, human soul gradually lost in the midst of town debauchery.
In "Two Hussars" are pictured two generations: the old, which indulged in all kinds of excesses but which at the same time was unsophisticated and sincere, and therefore lived in harmony with nature; and beside it the young generation -- viciously cautious, calculating, and hypocritical. The harmony of nature is broken, and the harmony of consciousness not yet found, and the soul, depraved by vice, sounds with horrible discord.
"Family Happiness" is a quiet, touching story of family affection and the author's experience.
"Polikushka" -- a tragedy of serfdom, the trifling of the sentimental gentry with the peasant's soul, which possesses hidden under its coarse appearance the finest moral traits that break at the mere touch of the perverted and decadent nobility.
The critics of the 1860s paid very little attention to these remarkable works.
They looked for a certain public standard and had not enough sensibility to perceive the higher moral beauty with which these works were imbued.
The silence of the critics induced one of them to write an article entitled "The Phenomena of Contemporary Literature Passed Over By Our Critics. Count Tolstoy and His Works."
We consider it out of place to enter into detailed criticism of these works, and we mention them only as facts, proving the unceasing inner creative work of Tolstoy.
END OF LEO TOLSTOY: HIS LIFE AND WORK,
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