Did you really not like The Kreutzer Sonata? I don’t say that it is a work of immortal genius – I’m not able to judge that – but I do consider that, compared to most of what is being written today both here and abroad, it would be hard to find anything to compare with the importance of its theme and the beauty of its execution. Aside from its artistic merits, which are in places stupendous, we must above all be grateful to the story for its power to excite our minds to their limits. Reading it, you can scarcely forbear to exclaim: ‘That’s so true!’ or alternatively ‘That’s stupid!’ There is no doubt that it has some irritating defects. As well as those you have listed, there is one for which it is hard to forgive the author, and that is his arrogance in discussing matters about which he understands nothing and is prevented by obstinacy from even wanting to understand anything. Thus his opinions on syphilis, foundling hospitals, women’s distaste for sexual intercourse and so on, are not only contentious but show what an ignorant man in some respects he is, a man who has never in his long life taken the trouble to read one or two books written by specialists on the subject. But at the same time the story’s virtues render these faults so insignificant that they waft away practically unnoticed, like feathers on the wind, and if we do notice them they serve merely to remind us of the fate of all human endeavour without exception, which is to be incomplete and never entirely free of blemishes.121
Chekhov undertook his momentous journey to study the notorious penal colony on the island of Sakhalin in the summer of 1890, and when he came back that autumn he was able to read the afterword that Tolstoy had now written – also in samizdat. In response to the furore caused by his story, Tolstoy clarified that chastity was merely an ideal, and that he was not advocating the end of the human race. The time Chekhov spent in Siberia changed him, and also his view of Tolstoy’s story, as in the letter he wrote in December 1890 to his great friend Alexey Suvorin (editor of New Times), his outlook was quite different:
Before my trip, The Kreutzer Sonata was a great event for me, but now I find it ridiculous and it seems quite absurd … To hell with the philosophy of the great men of this world! All great wise men are as despotic as generals and as rude and insensitive as generals, because they are confident of their impunity. Diogenes spat in people’s beards knowing nothing would come of it; Tolstoy lambasts doctors as scoundrels and exposes his ignorance of the important issues because he is another Diogenes whom no one will arrest or criticise in the newspapers …122
By the spring of 1891 The Kreutzer Sonata had still not been published, and Sonya decided to take matters into her own hands. Despite the personal affront she felt with regard to the content of The Kreutzer Sonata, she was keen to see it in print – in her edition. Accordingly, she had gone ahead and had the story typeset in Moscow, but a decision was made on 25 February that neither the story nor the afterword Tolstoy had written could be included in the thirteenth volume of his collected works. On 1 March, the day after the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Alexander II, Tolstoy was even formally anathematised for the first time in a sermon read in kharkov, which was then published. The Kreutzer Sonata was condemned as an ‘incoherent, filthy and amoral story’. Ten days later Sonya received word about the ban, and on 28 March she set off for St Petersburg with the intention of petitioning for an audience with the Tsar, so she could ask him personally for permission to publish The Kreutzer Sonata. It was granted on the proviso that the story was only published as part of the multi-volume collected works that were less readily available to vulnerable younger readers. Alexander III was, in fact, very gracious, and in an apparent nod to rumours that Vladimir Chertkov was the illegitimate son of Alexander II, Sonya noted in her diary that their tone of voice and manner of speaking were somewhat similar.123 Empress Maria Fyodorovna, who also received Sonya, was just as solicitous as her husband.124 The thirteenth volume of Tolstoy’s collected works appeared in June 1891.125 Naturally Pobedonostsev was furious when he learned of the Tsar’s leniency.126 That Alexander III was consistently indulgent towards Tolstoy’s subversive activities makes one wonder whether he was protected by his friendship with the influential Chertkov. There is certainly an eerie resemblance between photographs of the young Alexander III and Vladimir Chertkov – perhaps they really were half-brothers.
Sonya’s trip to St Petersburg was another nail in the coffin of the Tolstoys’ marriage. Tolstoy regarded the very idea of petitioning the Tsar as demeaning, and he wished for no profits to be made from his writing. Sonya, on the other hand, felt bound to earn money even if just to pay for the upkeep of their nine children. Unceasing arguments now led Tolstoy to make a decision to renounce all his property. In April 1891 the entire family gathered at Yasnaya Polyana to sort out the allocations on an equal basis. Sergey, for example, received Nikolskoye, which had once belonged to Tolstoy’s brother Nikolay, but was obliged to pay his sister Tanya and his mother a certain sum of money over the next fifteen years. Lev received the Samara estate and, as the youngest, three-year-old Vanechka by tradition received the bulk of Yasnaya Polyana, along with Sonya. Masha, as her father’s devoted daughter and follower, renounced her share (although she would change her mind when she eventually married in 1897).127 The arguments with Sonya continued when Tolstoy insisted she send to the press a letter announcing his renunciation of the copyright on his writings. It finally appeared in all of Russia’s major newspapers on 19 September 1891.128
The whole experience of dividing up his estate reminded Tolstoy of a famous literary antecedent, and he told his children to go away and read King Lear.129 It was probably the only time in his life that he actually recommended Shakespeare, but he had clearly been ruminating on King Lear for a while. In 1888 he had talked about the play to the campaigning journalist William Stead, who arrived in Yasnaya Polyana that May fresh from his audience with Alexander III in St Petersburg (he seems to have been the only man ever to have interviewed a Russian tsar). Stead was anxious to quiz Tolstoy about English authors: ‘Shakespeare, of course, came first,’ he later recalled. ‘He said that most of his plays were translated into Russian, and some of them were very popular. “Which most?” I asked. “King Lear,” said he, instantly; “it embodies the experience of every Russian izba.”’130 The nearest British equivalent to Tolstoy in terms of his zeal to expose the hypocrisy of Victorian society, and focus attention on poverty and vice, Stead was a controversial figure, but also a committed pacifist (he was on his way to take part in a peace congress in New York in 1912 when he went down with the Titanic).131 The character of king Lear at the end of Shakespeare’s play, meanwhile, is English literature’s nearest equivalent to the holy fool (yurodivy) – that peculiarly Russian form of sainthood to which Tolstoy aspired, and which is not encountered in any other religious culture.