Tolstoy’s Diaries

Volume I: 1847–1894

Edited and translated by

R. F. CHRISTIAN

Preface to the 2015 Edition

Tolstoy’s literary activities famously began in the venereal diseases clinic of Kazan University in the spring of 1847, when he was eighteen years old. During the month that he spent in the clinic, in almost complete isolation, he started keeping a diary. To begin with, Tolstoy regarded his diary as a record of his hopelessly optimistic self-improvement programme. Later it became an outlet for his creative and philosophical reflections, and as such comprises an indispensable companion to his published writings, both fictional and otherwise.

Keeping a diary, for Tolstoy, was not the deeply private affair it is for most people, even if it started out that way. In the all-too-brief week between Tolstoy’s proposal and marriage to Sonya Behrs in September 1862, he felt it incumbent upon him to give his young fiancée his diaries to read. The vivid realism which is the hallmark of Tolstoy’s fiction is matched by the frankness of his diary entries, but he did not feel he should conceal anything in his past from his future bride.

As an innocent and inexperienced eighteen-year-old girl, who had seen little of life, Sonya was deeply shocked and upset by what she later termed his ‘excessive conscientiousness’, particularly when it came to reading about his sexual history with peasant girls. Nevertheless, she went ahead with the marriage and before long she and her husband were regularly and sometimes frenetically reading each other’s diaries. It was a habit kept up until the very last months of Tolstoy’s long life in the summer and autumn of 1910, when his deteriorating relations with Sonya led him to try for the first time to keep a diary for ‘himself alone’.

Tolstoy did not keep a diary regularly throughout his life, for sometimes he transferred his exploration and articulation of psychological processes to his fictional works. Since his diaries span his entire adult life, however, they are indispensable reading for anyone seeking to look behind the scenes of the great novels and become better acquainted with their creator.

The same is true of Tolstoy’s letters, and his epistolary output was, as one might expect, equally prodigious – there are 8,500 letters published in the Russian edition of his Complete Collected Works. Tolstoy wrote thousands of letters, to all manner of people, from persecuted peasant sectarians exiled to Siberia to the Romanovs, eventually addressing both muzhik and Tsar as ‘Dear brother’.

The most touching letters Tolstoy wrote were to his immediate family – his wife Sonya, his children, his ‘aunt’ and surrogate mother Tatyana Alexandrovna (‘Toinette’), his sister and brothers. The most important letters he wrote were to his closest friends. First there was his distant relative Alexandra Andreyevna, a lady-in-waiting at Court, for whom he had the deepest respect and affection until his defection from the Orthodox Church. Then there was the shy and retiring Nikolay Strakhov, who worked at the Imperial Library in St Petersburg, but the most frequent recipient of Tolstoy’s letters was the aristocratic Vladimir Chertkov, his devoted follower. Chertkov was instrumental in disseminating Tolstoy’s religious ideas in translation, and thousands of people, from a dizzying array of faiths, felt compelled after reading them to write to the ‘Sage of Yasnaya Polyana’ for his advice on how to live their lives. Tolstoy tried to reply to them all.

It will be a long time before we have full English editions of the fourteen volumes of Tolstoy’s diaries and the twenty-five volumes of his letters in the Complete Collected Works. In the meantime, we can be eternally grateful to R. F. Christian, doyen of Anglophone Tolstoy studies, for doing all the hard work for us. The result of Professor Christian’s scrupulous work is four manageable volumes containing faithful translations of the most important of Tolstoy’s diary entries and letters. Rendered into supple English, they are enhanced by judicious and helpful annotations, and introductions which draw on Professor Christian’s deep knowledge, the fruit of a distinguished career of studying and writing about Tolstoy. It is hard to see how these invaluable editions can be surpassed.

Rosamund Bartlett

Rosamund Bartlett is the author of Tolstoy: A Russian Life (Profile Books).

R. F. Christian’s four volumes of Tolstoy’s Diaries and Letters are all available in Faber Finds.

Introduction

Tolstoy’s diaries greatly exceed in length and scope those of any other Russian author. They are usually divided into two categories. The diaries proper are written for the most part in exercise books, and are dated chronologically. The so-called ‘notebooks’ consist of various kinds of scribbling pads, desk calendars and loose sheets of paper, some dated, some not. Some notebooks are virtually identical with diaries in the normal sense and contain entries, usually dated, for periods when Tolstoy did not keep a regular diary. Others contain random notes and observations, lists of popular expressions and a variety of ephemeral matter. Others again, especially those of the last twenty years of his life, were essentially first drafts of what were later to become entries in his diary proper. Tolstoy’s diaries and notebooks taken together occupy thirteen volumes of the ninety-volume Soviet edition of his works (the Jubilee Edition 1928–58), and it is most unlikely that they will ever be translated in full. For the purposes of this edition I have confined myself almost entirely to the diaries proper, and have only very occasionally included an extract from a noteboook or sheet of paper where the content seemed to justify it. When this has been done, I have indicated it in a footnote.

Tolstoy’s diaries span a period of sixty-three years. The first entry is dated 17 March 1847, when Tolstoy was aged eighteen and a student at Kazan University. The last entry was written on 3 November 1910, as he lay dying at the railway station at Astapovo. There are unfortunately considerable gaps in the record, of which the first is the three-year period from June 1847 to June 1850. It was once argued that Tolstoy had destroyed his diaries for these years, but there is no evidence to support this contention and it is no longer seriously maintained. For the period 1850 to 1865 Tolstoy kept his diary fairly regularly in the sense that there are at least some entries for every year, but those for the late 1850s and early 1860s are comparatively short. Then there is a gap of thirteen years from 1865 to 1878 when Tolstoy was wholly absorbed in writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina – in some respects surrogate diaries – while from 1878 to 1888 there are relatively few entries except for two sustained six-month periods in 1881 and 1884. From 1888 to 1910 Tolstoy kept his diary regularly and the older he grew the longer it became. Roughly speaking, one half of it covers the period up to 1894 when Tolstoy was already sixty-six, while the other half is devoted to the last sixteen years of his life when his greatest literary achievements were behind him and his writing became increasingly didactic and moralistic. I have deliberately included a higher proportion of what he wrote in his younger days, but even so the balance of any selection must inevitably be weighted towards the years of his decline as an artist and his rapidly growing reputation as a moral and spiritual guide.

To translate all Tolstoy’s diaries into English would be a daunting task, and it is not surprising that it has never been undertaken. A beginning was made in 1917 with The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy. Youth, 1847–1852, translated from the Russian by C. J. Hogarth and A. Sirnis. It was an unsatisfactory beginning, and the book has long been out of print. The year 1917 also saw the appearance of The Journal of Leo Tolstoy; First Volume, 1895–1899, translated by Rose Strunsky, but this translation also left much to be desired, and there was no second volume. Ten years later Louise and Aylmer Maude published The Private Diary of Leo Tolstoy, 1853–1857, a vast improvement over any previous translation of any portion of the diaries, but despite their great experience and intimate knowledge of Tolstoy and his family they were unable to avoid some errors in deciphering the manuscripts, while certain passages were omitted for reasons of propriety. Finally the fiftieth anniversary of Tolstoy’s death in 1960 was marked by the publication in America of The Last Diaries of Leo Tolstoy, translated by Lydia Weston-Kesich, an accurate translation but confined to the year 1910. With the exception of Strunsky’s unsatisfactory version there are no English translations in whole or part of the years between 1857 and 1909, although individual entries have of course been quoted in English by biographers with access to Russian sources.

After publishing my edition of Tolstoy’s letters in 1978, the Athlone Press invited me to produce a companion edition of his diaries, also in two volumes and of roughly comparable length. My choice of what to include was made first of all on the basis of a careful reading of volumes 46–58 of the Jubilee Edition of Tolstoy’s works. I then compared the passages I had chosen with the choice made in volumes 19 and 20 of the more recent edition of N. N. Akopova and others, Moscow, 1965, and made a number of changes in order to reduce the amount of my own material and make it approximate more closely to their judicious and carefully balanced selection, while retaining certain passages of a politically sensitive or indelicate nature, as well as entries which present Tolstoy in a less than favourable light and which for that reason are sometimes conveniently overlooked. In making my selection I followed the same general principles as I followed when preparing my edition of Tolstoy’s letters. First of all I chose passages to do with Tolstoy the writer, his views about his own works and the works of other writers; secondly – those which concerned Tolstoy the thinker in a broader sense and expressed his attitude to the times he lived in, contemporary social problems, rural life, industrialisation, education, and more especially in later life, religious and spiritual questions; and thirdly – those which recorded the main stages of his biography, his relations with his family and friends, and the growth and development of his own personality. When introducing Tolstoy’s letters I expressed the hope that my work would stimulate others to produce a comparable edition of his diaries. I never imagined that the task would fall to me!

Tolstoy’s diaries are an invaluable mine of information about his life and thought, his restless, complex, contradictory nature and his unrelenting quest for ‘self-improvement’ and a rational answer to the question of the purpose of existence. They are the fullest and frankest record of his dissolute bachelor days, his eventful career as a soldier, his first, faltering steps as a writer, his disoriented years divided between the capital cities and his country estate, his hesitant and fruitless courtship of Valeriya Arsenyeva, his travels in Europe, and his eventual wooing and winning of Sofya Behrs. They are an indispensable source (together with the diaries of his wife) for the story of a most exceptional marriage, and they record his considered thoughts and ill-considered prejudices on the great variety of subjects to which he applied his powerful and unorthodox mind. They are the germ out of which his earliest ‘fiction’ grew, and although they tell us disappointingly little about his two great masterpieces, they reveal a lot about his literary tastes and practices. They cannot by any stretch of imagination be called works of literature. The language in which they are written is decidedly unpolished, at times ponderous and repetitive, at times laconic and abrupt. The syntax can be awkward and involved, the grammar not impeccable. The diaries abound in abbreviations, misspellings and lapses of the pen. The punctuation is unorthodox. The handwriting defies description. To charges of stylistic inelegance, Tolstoy would certainly have replied that he was only concerned with what he wished to say, not how he said it, and that he was not writing with one eye on the public (not, at least, until very late in life). It does not follow, however, that the form is always redeemed by the content. It would be foolish to pretend that there are not many trivial and tedious entries, or that the thoughts which take up a disproportionate amount of space in later years have not been more cogently expressed in one or other of his numerous books and articles. Nevertheless the diaries are an unparalleled record of the stages of development of a unique personality. Tolstoy himself attached the greatest importance to them. He often referred not merely to the pleasure he got from reading and rereading them, but also to their significance for understanding him. Towards the end of his life he frankly acknowledged ‘The diaries are me’. They are the story of his life told by himself and when read consecutively they reveal the process of his evolution as no other document can do.

The Honourable Gwendolyn Fairfax once remarked to Miss Cecily Cardew: ‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.’ If not sensational, the first entry in Tolstoy’s diary was sufficiently unusual for parts of it to be omitted from Hogarth’s translation, being written at the age of eighteen in a university clinic where Tolstoy was recovering from venereal disease, and it immediately strikes a note of candour and self-preoccupation. At this stage of his life Tolstoy had no audience in mind except himself and there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of what he wrote. He began by asking himself what his motives were for keeping a diary at all and acknowledged that one comprehensive purpose was to monitor the development of his faculties, draw up tables of rules for cultivating those faculties and define the nature and scope of his future activities. One of his first rules for developing his intellectual faculties was to evaluate and make extracts from important books he was reading, and since as a young law student at Kazan University he had been set the task of comparing Catherine the Great’s Instructions to the commission charged with preparing a new Code of Laws with Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois, it seemed appropriate for him to record in his diary his views about the Empress’s manifesto. I have included these ponderous and unremarkable views at some length as an illustration of Tolstoy’s mental processes as a second-year undergraduate. In addition to registering the growth and development of his faculties, his diaries were also intended to record his frequent dissatisfaction with himself, his many falls from grace and subsequent remorse and his constant striving towards moral self-improvement. It is Tolstoy himself and not the world about him that is the centre of attention of these early entries, and the picture which emerges from them is of a young man over-addicted to self-analysis and self-reproach, vain, egotistical, prone to show off, lazy, irresolute, fond of gambling and abnormally sensual. He is convinced that he is ‘a remarkable person’, an exception. At the same time he recognises that he must be a difficult, even an ‘unbearable’ man, hard to get on with, difficult to understand, ‘somehow unlovable’, for all the love he claims to feel towards other people. He desperately wants to be loved, to be accepted, to earn the praise of his fellow men, while being at the same time uneasily aware of his superiority over them. On at least one occasion he admits to wishing to ‘influence other people’s happiness’, to be useful to them, but for the most part it is his own personality, its shortcomings and the need to remedy them that are his main preoccupation. As well as tabulating his weaknesses, the early diaries contain some succinct generalisations about life and death, religion and various aspects of human behaviour – as, for example, that ‘the most offensive form of egoism is self-sacrifice’ or ‘unhappiness makes man virtuous, happiness makes him vicious’. They also include observations on the books he is reading and occasional extracts from literary or philosophical works which have impressed him. Having moved to the Caucasus in 1851 he begins to record details of army life, military actions and the officers and men with whom he lived. His entries become more self-consciously literary and he confesses to wishing to use his diaries ‘to form his style’, to serve in fact as trials of the pen. He seems now at times to be writing with an imaginary audience in mind and to be drafting out material which will form the basis of short stories firmly grounded in his own experience. ‘I’ll try and sketch Knoring’s portrait’, he writes of an officer colleague, adding significantly that ‘it’s impossible to describe a man, but it is possible to describe the effect he has on me’. His thumb-nail sketch of the Cossack Mark (10 August 1851) is another example of Tolstoy feeling his way as an aspiring author – and incidentally an illustration of the fact that writing did not come easily to him, as witness the phrase ‘he completely satisfied the requirements of the posture of a man sitting down’! He tried his hand too at natural descriptions and recorded conversations which would reappear in revised form in his earliest fiction. He painstakingly formulated generalisations on human virtues and vices – on courage, for example, or cowardice – and on national characteristics. He also made notes about his literary plans and outlined the ideas for his early Caucasian stories and his first major work of fiction Childhood. It was in his diaries that he spoke for the first time about his love of history, his wish ‘to compile a true, accurate history of Europe’, and the need of the historian to explain every historical fact in human terms. Tolstoy never realised his characteristically unrealisable ambition as a historian, but his extensive historical reading and his overriding concern with the role of the individual in the historical process provided much of the stimulus to write a full-scale novel on a major historical theme.

Scattered throughout the early diaries are numerous obiter dicta about writers and works of literature – interesting more for what they tell us about Tolstoy than about the authors themselves. They include references to Pushkin, Lermontov, Griboyedov, Turgenev, Pisemsky and Ostrovsky, as well as Rousseau, Balzac and George Sand, Goethe and Schiller, Dickens and Thackeray. They confirm his belief in the moral purpose of literature; they venture the opinion – welcome for him – that in contemporary works of fiction interest in the details of feelings is replacing interest in events themselves; and they reveal that it is the character and personality of an author as reflected in what he writes that interests him most as a reader. They also contain, incidentally, some unflattering remarks about women authors which ill accord with his later admration for George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Mrs Henry Wood and others.

At this early stage in Tolstoy’s life one already finds in his diaries an anti-militaristic strain, a tendency to venerate the common people at the expense of his own class of society and on orientation towards the practical and the useful which are such typical features of the mature Tolstoy – whether in his resolve to edit a journal to propagate morally useful writings or his desire to found a religion ‘purged of faith and mystery, a practical religion which does not promise a future bliss but provides bliss on earth’. It was also becoming clear to him that literature was to be his true vocation; ‘literary fame’, as he expressed it, ‘and the good which I can do by my writing’.

His writing, however, did not immediately prosper after his return to St Petersburg in 1856, and the next few years until his marriage in 1862 were difficult and unsettled ones, punctuated by travels in Western Europe, estate management and educational experiments at home, and the determination to find a wife before it was too late. His diaries give a clear, if incomplete, picture of his mental and spiritual development during his late twenties and early thirties, and I drew on them extensively when constructing a picture of this period of his life in an earlier book on Tolstoy.* As I said there, although he moved in the circles of the Moscow and Petersburg intelligentsia he was not himself an ‘intellectual’, and while he had certain convictions and beliefs, they did not tally with any recognisable conservative, liberal or radical viewpoint. His views altered with the company he kept. He liked upsetting other people’s convictions. Although hostile to ‘progress’ in the sense of industrialisation, capitalist expansion or the building of railways, and to a system of priorities which put telegraphs, roads and ships before literature, he criticised the Slavophiles for their backwardness and expressed the fear that he might himself lag behind his age. Indifferent or hostile to constitutional government and unimpressed by what he saw of parliamentary democracy in the West, he noted that ‘all governments are alike in their extent of good and evil: the best ideal is anarchy’. Nationalism he regarded as ‘a unique obstacle to the development of freedom’, although he had his moments of jingoism during the Crimean War and again during the Polish insurrection of 1863. Contemptuous of aristocratic privilege and indolence, he could also write, in a positive sense: ‘Aristocratic feeling is worth a lot.’ Congenitally hostile to the dogmas of Orthodoxy, he still classed himself as a believer and found inspiration, though not rational satisfaction, in the ritual of the Orthodox Church. ‘The nearness to death’, he wrote, ‘is the best argument for faith … Better to accept the old, time-honoured, comforting and childishly simple [faith]. This is not rational, but you feel it.’ Instinct and intuition counted for much with him. His powerful mind seemed able to demolish any logical theory, but only to throw him back on irrational hunches, faith, or the activity of the heart which by their very nature defy logic. Elsewhere he confessed to himself, ‘The sort of mind which I have and which I like in others is the sort which does not believe in any theory …’ Caught between the Scylla of faith and the Charybdis of reason, he lived in a state of constant turmoil, unsure of himself and deeply suspicious of people who subscribed to any man-made philosophy. It was bad enough, no doubt, to have to believe in God when all your reason revolted against it; but it was much better than believing in Chernyshevsky.

The single most important event in Tolstoy’s life was his marrige to Sofya Behrs in 1862, the prelude to, and immediate aftermath of which are recorded in his diary for that year. On the one hand his wife brought him a sense of stability which he had not previously known and created an atmosphere in which he could work with the maximum encouragement and support; on the other hand her strong personality and quick temper, and the fact that her views on many fundamental issues differed widely from his own led to increasing friction and animosity as time went by and his attitudes became more extreme. Shortly before he was married Tolstoy gave his fiancée his bachelor diaries to read and the shock which she – a sheltered girl of eighteen – experienced on learning about his sexual promiscuity was one from which she never perhaps fully recovered. Both husband and wife had recourse to their diaries at times of bitterness and tension. Each had access to what the other wrote and both said things which they bitterly regretted afterwards. ‘She will remain a mill-stone round my neck and round the children’s until I die,’ he wrote in 1884. On another occasion he wrote that it was fortunate for his daughter Masha that her mother did not love her, while his son Seryozha is described as having ‘the same castrated mind’ as his mother. Needless to say, these were uncontrollable outbursts which later caused him great remorse. ‘Some three days ago,’ he observed in 1894, ‘I read through my diary for 1884 and was disgusted with myself for my unkindness and the cruelty of my opinions about Sonya and Seryozha. Let them know that I take back all the unkind things I said about them.’ The following year he wrote ‘When reading through my diary I found a passage – there were several of them – where I repudiate those angry words which I wrote about her. These words were written at moments of exasperation. I now repeat this once more for the sake of everybody who should come across these diaries [Tolstoy’s underlining]. I was often exasperated with her because of her hasty, inconsiderate temper, but, as Fet used to say, every husband gets the wife he needs. She was – and I can see now in what way – the wife I needed. She was the ideal wife in a pagan sense, in the sense of loyalty, domesticity, self-denial, love of family – pagan love – and she has the potential to become a Christian friend.’ Likewise his wife had occasion to regret her more intemperate utterances – provoked by Tolstoy’s absurd jealousy of the composer Taneyev she once allegedly shouted at him ‘you’re evil, you’re a beast’ – although she did not actually repudiate them in writing in the same way as her husband. A reading of both their diaries is absolutely essential to an understanding of their long, loving, but at times unhappy and turbulent marriage; yet considerable allowance must be made for the fact that both partners often wrote in moments of anger or depression, and that when things were running smoothly as they often were, they seldom found the need to say so.

From the early 1880s onwards, after Tolstoy’s so-called ‘conversion’, his diaries came to be used more and more as a vehicle for his religious, moral and social philosophy, and to include raw material which was subsequently processed into articles, letters and even works of fiction. Towards the end of his life they were written in the knowledge that they would be read outside the family (at times, indeed, in the hope that they would be) and increasingly they became the subject of bitter family altercations, especially with the appearance on the scene of Tolstoy’s dedicated, but dictatorial disciple Vladimir Chertkov. The story of the struggle for their possession and publication and the bitterness it created between those most closely involved – Tolstoy and his wife, their daughter Alexandra and Chertkov – has been told many times. Every entry made was certain to become public property, if not immediately, at least in the not very distant future, not excluding the so-called ‘secret diary’ of 1908 and the ‘diary for myself alone’ of 1910. In the circumstances it is not surprising that the more intimate side of Tolstoy’s life is less in evidence – though frank enough when it is – and that the prevailing tone of the later diaries is pedagogical and moralistic. The constant harping on certain themes is bound to be tedious at times, but that does not mean that there are not many shrewd observations on a wide range of subjects of universal interest. There are, for example, some pertinent remarks on social and political theories, some of which have not been widely circulated in the Soviet Union. ‘It doesn’t follow,’ he wrote, ‘that, as Marx says, capitalism leads to socialism. Perhaps it will do, but only to socialism by force.’ And again: ‘Even if what Marx predicts were to happen, then the only thing that would happen would be that despotism would be transferred. Now the capitalists are in power, then the workers’ bosses would be in power.’ The argument that the end justifies the means never weighed in the least with Tolstoy. Indeed on one occasion he referred disparagingly to what he called ‘the socialist, Marxist idea that if you do something wrong for a very long time it will come right of itself’. His views on economics were concerned primarily with an answer to the question of the ownership and redistribution of land, and he believed that it was to be found in the writings of the American economist Henry George and in his Single Tax system. The most important factor in the economic equation for him was the agricultural labourer, but no economic or political changes, he reiterated, could be of lasting value as long as people remained the same. Only religion, he belived, had the power to transform people’s lives and eliminate the need, inherent in all political systems, for a quite unacceptable degree of coercion. His views on religion take up many pages of his later diaries, especially his insistence on religion as a moral code of practice, whether sanctioned by Christ or by one of the Eastern faiths to which he became increasingly attracted. His diaries reveal that he was a most unorthodox Christian and in one entry he went so far as to write: ‘Read an interesting book about Christ never having existed, that it was a myth. There is as much to be said for the likelihood that this is true as there is against.’ What one believed, however, or which of the great religious teachers of the world one turned to for support, was ultimately less important than how one lived. There was no reason why a Christian should live a better life than, say, a Hindu; but Tolstoy for his part found that the essence of Christ’s teaching as he interpreted it, especially its emphasis on turning the other cheek, non-resistance to evil by force, loving one’s neighbour and forgiving one’s enemies, provided him with the best prescription for a happy and worthwhile life – if only he could follow it! Another theme which constantly recurs in the diaries is that of the meaning and purpose of art, an activity which he, like many other people, regarded as essentially the expression and communication of feelings. But, more than most people, he was acutely aware of the power of art – its power for evil as well as good – and therefore the nature and quality of the feelings communicated by the artist must be the paramount considerations, and what was good art must ultimately be a question of ethics, not aesthetics; a quasi-religious activity with a clear moral purpose. Tolstoy’s attitude to art as a necessary ingredient in his recipe for the moral and spiritual progress of mankind obviously conditioned his views about what he was reading and what he would write. Of course in later life he never wrote anything to compare artistically with War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but he did continue to produce stories, plays and one major novel which are still widely read all over the world today. There are many references in the diaries of the last two decades of his life to Resurrection, Hadji Murat, The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergey and The Fruits of Enlightenment and also to many other minor works. They include draft plans and modifications to them, as well as various seemingly trivial details which are nevertheless important to the student of Tolstoy’s literary methods and practices. He also confided to his diaries some terse, laconic pronouncements about his fellow authors, especially Russian, which, although influenced naturally enough by his general philosophy of art, were often shrewd. He praised Gorky for his great talent and knowledge of the people, but did not admire him as a psychologist and found his attribution of heroic thoughts and feelings to his characters arbitrary and exaggerated. Gogol had, in his opinion, ‘an enormous talent, a wonderful heart and a weak, i.e. unadventurous, timid mind’. He acknowledged that Chekhov, like Pushkin, had made important advances in form and was enthusiastic about some of his short stories, but was disappointed by what he saw as a lack of content, more particularly in his plays. He found much to admire in The Brothers Karamazov, especially the Grand Inquisitor legend and the Father Zosima episode, but criticised Dostoyevsky for his ‘slipshod manner of writing’ and ‘unnatural conversations’. Of Andreyev he said: ‘His denominator is disproportionately big compared with his numerator.’ Of Bernard Shaw – ‘He has got more brains than is good for him’!

If Tolstoy’s observations about his fellow writers are unlikely to give offence, the same is not true of some of the derogatory things he said about women. ‘For seventy years,’ he wrote in 1899, ‘I have been lowering my opinion of women more and more, and I need to lower it still further.’ He also once admitted to finding it difficult to love a Jew, adding that he ‘must try hard’. But it is not so much his prejudices that dominate the diaries of his old age as the personal tragedy of a man who tried to live – and to love his neighbours – in an environment from which he was growing increasingly alienated, while continuing to be surrounded by a loving family and the veneration of men and women throughout the world. These diaries record his sense of loneliness and isolation, his anguish at being continually misunderstood and on numerous occasions his wish to die. ‘Living is dying,’ he wrote. ‘Try to die well.’ The tragic events of 1910, his wife’s hatred of Chertkov, her attempts at suicide and his own departure from home in the middle of the night make painful reading. The very last entry in his diary shortly before he lost consciousness, ends with the words: ‘Here is my plan. Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra [do what you must, come what may]. And all is for the good of others and above all for me.’ Perhaps significantly, the last word he wrote was – me.

In translating the diaries I have kept as closely as possible to the sense of the original, while smoothing over some of the syntactical roughnesses and correcting obvious slips of the pen. To facilitate reading I have inserted the first person pronoun in a number of contexts where Tolstoy omits it and I have also taken liberties with the punctuation. My transliteration system and general editorial policy follow the principles set out in the preface to my edition of Tolstoy’s letters. In a few cases, however, I have retranslated the titles of articles by Tolstoy, so that what was previously A Circle of Reading is now called A Cycle of Reading and The End of an Age has been renamed The End of the World. Letter to an Indian has been preferred to the earlier Letter to a Hindu, while the word zapiski has been con sistently translated as ‘notes’ instead of ‘memoirs’ in the stories The Notes of a Billiard Marker, The Notes of a Madman and The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor Kuzmich. The spelling of the Cossack village where Tolstoy was first stationed has been standardised as Starogladkovskaya (different variants exist), and I have regularly used the forms Vanechka and Kostenka (not Vanichka and Kostinka) where Tolstoy’s own spelling is erratic. I have used the hybrid combination Nicholas Pavlovich (not Nikolay Pavlovich) when the Tsar Nicholas I is referred to by Christian name and patronymic, but Nicholas in all other contexts. With newspaper titles I have kept the widely used Notes of the Fatherland to translate Otechestvenniye zapiski and have used The Herald of Europe for Vestnik Evropy and The Russian Herald for Russky vestnik. Sankt-Peterburgskiye vedomosti is rendered as either The St Petersburg Gazette or the Petersburg Gazette, depending on whether Tolstoy uses the full or abbreviated form. Versta (3,500 feet), arshin (28 inches) and vershok (1¾ inches) have not been translated. Dvoryanstvo has normally been translated as ‘gentry’, except in the standardised phrase ‘Marshal of the Nobility’. I have generally preferred to translate khudozhestvenny (artistic) as ‘literary’ or ‘fictional’ in a literary context; both ‘hunting’ and ‘shooting’ have been used to render okhota and its derivatives. Generally speaking, I have tried in my translations, as I did in the Letters, to recapture Tolstoy’s habit of repeating the same word rather than employing a synonym, and the observations I made in my preface to that edition are applicable to this one also.

The footnotes and critical apparatus are intended to be self-sufficient, but cross-references have been made to the Letters in cases where more detailed information might be desired, particularly where a person mentioned has a biographical entry in that edition as one of Tolstoy’s family circle or a frequent correspondent. The short narrative account of Tolstoy’s life, divided chronologically into periods, follows the same lines as the one originally written for the Letters.

I would like to express my gratitude to those members of the staff of the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow who have assisted me on a number of occasions both personally and in correspondence, and in particular to Mrs Norma Porter who typed the manuscript with exemplary patience and accuracy.

St Andrews, 1984

R. F. Christian

* (Tolstoy: A critical introduction, 1969)

1847–1855

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on 28 August 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, his mother’s estate some 130 miles to the south west of Moscow. His mother, born Princess Marya Volkonskaya, died before Tolstoy was two years old, and his father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, a retired Lieutenant Colonel and veteran of 1812, only survived her by seven years. Tolstoy, who was the fourth of their five children, was left an orphan at the age of nine, and was brought up by two married aunts, the second of whom lived in Kazan, which was to become the Tolstoys’ home from 1841 to 1847. In 1844 he succeeded with some difficulty in passing the entrance examinations to Kazan University, and began to study Oriental languages with the intention of becoming a diplomat. A year later he transferred to the Law Faculty, but his initial enthusiasm for the subject soon wore off, and although he passed his first-year examinations well enough, his erratic attendance in his second year coupled with a somewhat dissolute life and an attack of venereal disease led to his withdrawing from the university on grounds of ‘ill health and domestic circumstances’. The circumstances referred to in his letter of withdrawal concerned the final division of his parents’ estates between himself and his brothers and sister, as a result of which Tolstoy inherited Yasnaya Polyana and four other estates, a total of some 5,400 acres of land together with 330 male serfs and their families. His diary for 1847, as well as expressing at length his views about Catherine II’s Instructions to the commission engaged in drafting a new Code of Laws which had been a special subject of study at Kazan University, also records the first stages of his new life as a landowner at Yasnaya Polyana and his determination to define the nature and scope of his future activities and to draw up rules of behaviour which would enable him to develop his mental, physical and moral faculties along the lines he desired. As a boy, he later recalled, he had been greatly impressed by reading the story of Joseph in the Bible, various tales from the Arabian Nights, the Russian byliny or heroic poems and the poetry of Pushkin. In his teens he became an avid disciple of Rousseau. Among other foreign authors he greatly admired Dickens, Sterne and Schiller, while nearer home he singled out Pushkin, Gogol and the early Turgenev as writers who had made a great impact on him. He also acknowledged the enormous influence on him at the time of St Matthew’s Gospel and especially the Sermon on the Mount.

In autumn 1848 Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana for Moscow, and spent the winter in frivolous society pursuits. Early in 1849 he moved to Petersburg, but after spending a few weeks preparing to take the entrance examinations for the Law Faculty at Petersburg University and at the same time losing considerable sums of money at cards, he returned to Yasnaya Polyana and opened a school for the peasant children on his estate. For the next two years he continued to live in the country, with occasional excursions into Tula and Moscow society, devoting much time to music, cards and gymnastics and taking his first tentative steps as a writer. In 1851 he wrote the unfinished and unpublished A History of Yesterday, a Sternean, digressive, self-conscious analysis of the life of a single day. He also translated most of Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and began work on his own autobiographical novel Childhood. There are no diary entries for the period June 1847 to June 1850, although a few letters have survived from these years. The diaries for 1850–51 single out what he felt to be his greatest failings – vanity, irresolution, sensuality, cowardice and laziness; they also reveal his growing dissatisfaction with his way of life and the wish to make a fresh start. The opportunity came in April 1851 when his brother Nikolay was due to return from leave to his army unit in the Caucasus, and Tolstoy decided at short notice to accompany him. Soon after arriving in the Caucasus Tolstoy took part as a volunteer in an expedition against a local village (Georgia had been annexed by Russia in 1801 but the mountain tribes living in the north were still proving troublesome), and towards the end of 1851 he moved to Tiflis in order to prepare for examinations which would qualify him to join the army as a cadet.

Tolstoy entered the army proper in 1852 and for the next two years he was attached to an artillery brigade stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladkovskaya in the North Caucasus. He took part in a number of expeditions against the Chechen tribe led by the redoubtable Shamil, in the course of which he narrowly escaped death and capture. He received his commission in 1854 and was soon transferred to active service on the Danube, where hostilities had broken out between Russia and Turkey the previous autumn. He reached Bucharest in March 1854, but saw little fighting, serving for most of the time as a staff officer and being generally in poor health, as a result of which he underwent two operations before returning to Russia in September 1854, in the same month as British and French troops landed in the Crimea. He immediately applied to be posted there and reached Sevastopol in November when it was already under siege by the Allies. He spent the next year in the Crimea and was briefly in charge of a gun battery on the outskirts of Sevastopol during some of the heaviest fighting of the war. After the town had fallen he was despatched as a courier to Petersburg, but soon afterwards he sent in his resignation from the army, which became effective in 1856.

Tolstoy’s army service was by no means a full-time occupation. There was ample time for reading, writing, travel, music, gambling, womanising and many other activities. Reading for pleasure meant mainly fiction and history, with a little poetry thrown in, and with the exception of Rousseau it was largely confined to the nineteenth century, although embracing English, French and German authors no less than Russian. Tolstoy’s growing urge to be a writer himself was stimulated not only by what he read, but also by what he lived through in the Caucasus and Crimea and the unexpected amount of leisure time at his disposal. His first published story, Childhood, appeared in 1852, followed by The Raid in 1853 and Boyhood in 1854. In 1855 he published Sevastopol in December, Sevastopol in May and The Wood-felling, all drawing heavily on his own experiences as an army officer, and Sevastopol in August followed in 1856. As he said many years later when recalling his military career: ‘I didn’t become a general in the army, but I did in literature.’

Tolstoy’s diaries for the years 1851–5 take on a more conscious literary flavour as he comes to realise that literature was to be his true vocation. That they were the germ of his early fiction is a commonplace which nobody now would seriously dispute.

1847

17 March, Kazan    It’s now six days since I entered the clinic,1 and for six days now I’ve been almost satisfied with myself. Les petites causes produisent de grands effets. I caught gonorrhoea where one usually catches it from of course; and this trivial circumstance gave me a jolt which made me mount the step which I had put my foot on long ago, but had been quite unable to heave my body on to (probably because, withing thinking, I put my left foot on instead of my right). Here I’m completely alone, nobody disturbs me, I haven’t any servants here, nobody helps me – consequently nothing extraneous has any influence on my reason or memory, and my work must necessarily make progress. But the chief advantage is that I’ve come to see clearly that the disorderly life which the majority of fashionable people take to be a consequence of youth is nothing other than a consequence of the early corruption of the soul.

Solitude is just as good for a man who lives in society, as social intercourse is for a man who doesn’t. Let a man withdraw from society, let him retreat into himself, and his reason will soon cast aside the spectacles which showed him everything in a distorted form, and his view of things will become so clear that he will be quite unable to understand how he had not seen it all before. Let reason do its work and it will indicate to you your destiny, and will give you rules with which you can confidently enter society. Everything that is in accord with man’s primary faculty – reason – will likewise be in accord with everything that exists; an individual’s reason is a part of everything that exists, and a part cannot upset the organisation of the whole. But the whole can destroy the part. Therefore educate your reason so that it will be in accord with the whole, with the source of everything, and not with the part, with human society; then your reason will merge into one with the whole, and then society, as the part, will have no influence over you. It’s easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put one single principle into practice.

18 March    I’ve been reading Catherine’s Instructions,2 and since I’ve generally made it a rule when reading any serious work to think about it and copy out any remarkable thoughts from it, I’ll write down my opinion here about the first six chapters of this remarkable work. […]

Chapter I comprises a proof of the fact that Russia is a European power. Chapter II contains proofs of the necessity for autocracy, which are the more convincing in that she speaks about the Monarch in the abstract. However great a woman’s mind may be, you will always find in its manifestations a certain pettiness and inconsistency, and so Catherine includes as one of her proofs of the necessity for absolute power: ‘Another reason is that it is better to obey the laws under one master than to be subject to the wills of many’; or ‘The intention and end of absolute government is the glory of the citizens, the state and the sovereign’. […]

Chapter V, On the Condition of all People in Civil Society, begins with the philosophical idea that a happy man is a man whose will, though under the influence of external circumstances, can subdue his passions. When I read this, I thought Catherine would deduce from this proposition the notion of the law as an external circumstance influencing the will and making man happy through being subject to the law; but she passes on to the notion of the possibility of equality within the state, i.e. the subjection of all men to the same laws. Her notions of freedom under monarchical rule are as follows: freedom, she says, is man’s ability to do everything he ought to do, and not to be compelled to do what he ought not to do. I would like to know what she understands by the words ought and ought not; if she means by the words what he ought to do the natural law, it clearly follows from this that freedom can only exist in a state in whose legislation natural law is in no way different from positive law – an idea which is perfectly correct. Further, in support of her opinion, Catherine adduces an extremely ingenious proof: freedom is the right to act in accordance with the laws. But if a citizen acts illegally, he thereby gives others the right to act likewise, and so freedom is violated. […]

19 March    A passion for the sciences is beginning to manifest itself in me; but although it is the noblest of all man’s passions, I shall never surrender myself to it in a one-sided manner, i.e. completely destroy feeling, not concern myself with application, and only endeavour to educate my mind and fill my memory with facts. Onesidedness is the main cause of man’s unhappiness.

I’ll now continue my analysis of Catherine’s Instructions. […] She goes on to say that people can be governed by moderation, not severity (I would add to that: ‘in monarchies’). She then says that punishments ought to be derived from the nature of the crime itself. I would again add: ‘in monarchies’. For history shows us that the laws of Draco and Lycurgus, which were very harsh and incompatible with the nature of the crime, were tolerated; for in a republic, as Montesquieu rightly observes, the people are at once both the subordinate and the absolute power, and therefore since laws in such a case are the expression of the will of the people, they are tolerated by the people, and since the people governs itself there is no need for punishments to be derived from the nature of the crime, for in republics the will of the citizens serves as the standard of punishment. Catherine goes on to divide crimes into crimes against religion, against morals, against law and order and against the security of the citizens, and in indicating what sort of punishments ought to be applied to each class of crime, arrives at a completely false conclusion by deriving each punishment from the essence of the crime. Actually with regard to the last class of crime she says that the punishments for such crimes should be banishment, a life for a life, or a monetary fine where property has been alienated; but she also says that since for the most part those who attempt to appropriate the property of others do not own any themselves, the fine should be replaced by the death penalty. This idea is unworthy of the great Catherine. For how can an injured party be compensated for theft by the death of the other party? Surely the state can both compensate the injured party for his loss and retain a member of society who might still be useful to it. The whole of the next chapter serves to refute this false idea. Here she argues quite correctly for the need for moderation with regard to punishments, then speaks about the mistakes sometimes made by a legislator, saying that a legislator often employs severity in order to eradicate a particular evil, but that when the main evil has been eliminated there still remains the abuse created by this severity. Further on she completely contradicts herself when she says that it is highly unjust to punish murderers and robbers in like manner, and then says that punishments which disfigure the human body should be abolished. But how can one accept the death penalty without accepting disfigurement? The chief disfigurement of the body is its separation from the soul. […]

Chapter IX contains some rules for judicial procedure in general. […] The idea that major criminals might choose the judges for their own trials shows Catherine’s endeavour to justify monarchical rule and to contend that freedom exists in obeying laws which emanate from the monarch, but she forgets that freedom to obey laws which do not emanate from the people is not freedom. […]

21 March    In Chapter X the basic principles and the most dangerous errors connected with criminal legal procedure are expounded.

At the beginning of this chapter she asks herself a question. ‘Whence do punishments derive, and whence the right to punish?’ To the first question she replies: ‘Punishments derive from the need to safeguard the laws.’ To the second question she also replies very ingeniously. She says: ‘The right to punish belongs to the laws alone, but only the monarch as the representative of the state as a whole can make laws.’ Throughout the Instructions we are constantly presented with two heterogeneous elements which Catherine has constantly sought to reconcile, namely the recognition of the need for constitutional rule, and self-love, i.e. her desire to be the absolute sovereign of Russia. For example, while saying that under monarchical rule only the monarch can have legislative power, she accepts the existence of such power as axiomatic without referring to its origin. A subordinate government cannot impose punishments because it is a part of the whole, but a monarch has this right because he is the representative of all the citizens, Catherine says. But is the representation of the people by the sovereign in absolute monarchies the expression of the sum total of the free, individual wills of the citizens? No, the expression of the general will in absolute monarchies amounts to the following: I tolerate a lesser evil, because if I didn’t tolerate it, I would be subjected to a greater evil.

A second question concerns the proper measures necessary for keeping an accused person in custody and for detecting a crime. In trying to solve the first part of this question she says that keeping an accused person in custody is the punishment which precedes the conviction. Catherine felt the falsity of this notion and the injustice of this practice, and tried to justify it by saying that any accused person is bound to be guilty.3 But why should a person who is a hundred times more guilty than the one accused, but who has not been accused because he has no enemies, not suffer an equal punishment? In my opinion, keeping an accused person in custody can never be justified, for it is the height of injustice to subject the innocent and the guilty to the same punishments but to discriminate between the rich and the poor, for the rich can easily find bail for themselves, but the poor seldom can.

In the same chapter there occurs a purely republican idea. She actually says that hearings of cases should be in public, so that citizens should be aware of their security under the protection of the laws. But can there exist security of citizens under the protection of the laws when not only judicial sentences but even the laws themselves can be altered at the will of an autocrat? […]

22 March    In my opinion intention, since it is a mental act not outwardly expressed, can never be contrary to judicial law, for it is not subject to it. No mental acts can be subject to anything except the will; and the will is an unlimited faculty. Although it is said that acts which evince criminal intent are punishable, these acts ought not to be punished, for the acts themselves do no harm, while the intention is subject to the influence of the will, and so an evil intention can be changed to a good one before it it realised. The most powerful manifestation of a person’s conscience is usually just before the perpetration of an evil deed. […]

24 March    I have changed a lot; but I still haven’t achieved the degree of perfection (in my studies) which I would like to achieve. I don’t carry out what I prescribe for myself; what I do carry out, I don’t carry out well; I don’t exercise my memory. Therefore I’ll write down some rules here which, it seems to me, will help me a lot if I follow them. (1) What is required to be carried out without fail, carry out in spite of everything. (2) What you do carry out, carry out well. (3) Never refer to a book if you forget something, but try to remember it yourself. (4) Make your mind work constantly with all possible vigour. (5) Always read and think aloud. (6) Don’t be ashamed to tell people who interrupt you that they are interrupting you; first of all let a person feel it, but if he doesn’t understand, apologise and tell him outright. In accordance with my second rule I intend without fail to finish my commentary on the whole of Catherine’s Instructions.

Question V about the scale of punishments is resolved as follows: the evil which a punishment inflicts on a criminal ought to be greater than the good which the crime might have afforded him. I don’t agree with this. Crime and punishment ought to be completely commensurate. […]

Chapter XIII speaks about manufactured wares and trade. Catherine rightly remarks that agriculture is the basis of all trade, and that in a country where people do not own their own property, agriculture cannot flourish; for people usually take more care of things which belong to them than of things which can always be taken away from them. That is the reason why agriculture and trade cannot flourish in our country as long as serfdom4 exists, for a man who is subservient to another man not only cannot be assured of owning his own property permanently, but cannot even be assured of his own personal fate. Then: ‘Skilled farmers and craftsmen ought to be given bonuses.’ In my opinion it is equally necessary for a state to punish evil and to reward good.

25 March    It is not enough to deter people from evil; it is also necessary to encourage them to do good. She goes on to say that those peoples which are lazy because of their climate must be accustomed to activity by depriving them of all means of subsistence except labour; she also observes that these peoples are usually given to pride, and that this very pride may serve as a means of eradicating laziness. But peoples which are lazy because of their climate are always endowed with passionate feelings, and if they were to be active, it would be the worse for the state. Catherine would have done better to have said people, and not peoples. And indeed, if we apply her remarks to private individuals we shall find that they are exceedingly just.

Then she says that in highly populated countries machines which replace manual labour are frequently unnecessary and even harmful, but that for exported wares it is very necessary to use machines, for the peoples which we sell them to can buy the same goods from neighbouring peoples.

I think just the opposite: machines for manufacturing wares for circulating within the state are infinitely more useful than machines for manufacturing wares for export. For machines for manufacturing wares of general utility would improve the condition of the citizens as a whole by making these wares much cheaper, while goods for export only benefit private individuals. It seems to me that the cause of the poverty of the lower classes in England is, first, that they don’t own landed property, and secondly that all the attention there is directed exclusively to foreign trade.

Catherine says very rightly that monopolies are a great evil for trade. In my opinion a monopoly is an evil and an oppresssive influence on trade, the merchant class and the citizens themselves. For trade it is an evil because, if the monopoly did not exist, there would be a greater number of traders engaged in that branch of trade, instead of one individual or company. For the merchant class – because it is deprived of participation in that branch of trade. And for the citizens – because each monopolist imposes as it were his own laws on them. Unfortunately this evil has taken deep root in our country.

Catherine goes on to say that it would be very useful to found a bank; but so that the citizens should have no doubts about the integrity of such a bank, she says that it needs to be established under some charitable organisation.

Many of Catherine’s ideas are extremely odd; she constantly wants to argue that although a monarch is not limited by anything external, he is limited by his own conscience; but if a monarch were to regard himself as unlimited, despite all natural laws, this would mean that he has no conscience, and is limiting himself by something which he does not possess. Then Catherine tries to argue that neither a monarch nor his noblemen should engage in trade. The fact that a monarch should not engage in trade is clear enough, for there would be no need for him to trade at all in order to acquire possession of everything in his own state if he wished to do so.

But why should noblemen in Russian not trade? If we had an aristocracy which limited the monarch, it would indeed have plenty to do without trade. But we don’t have one. Our aristocracy of birth is disappearing and has almost disappeared already because of poverty; and that poverty has come about because noblemen have been ashamed to engage in trade. God grant that in our time noblemen may come to understand their high destiny, which is simply and solely to increase their power. What supports despotism? Either lack of education among the people, or lack of strength on the part of the oppressed section of the people. […]

Chapter XV speaks about the nobility. Here Catherine defines what the nobility is and what its duties are; its duties she considers to be the defence of the country and the administration of justice in it. And she considers its basic principles to be virtue and honour. Montesquieu recognised honour alone as the basis (principe) of all monarchical government, but she adds virtue to it; indeed, virtue may be taken to be the basis of monarchical government. But history demonstrates to us that it has never actually been so as yet. Her idea that nobody may deprive a nobleman of his rights of nobility as long as he is worthy of that title is a remarkable one. In conclusion, she says of the nobility that the right to enjoy honours and renown should belong to those whose ancestors were worthy of honours and renown. After Krylov’s fable about the geese,5 nothing more needs to be said about this false idea. […]

26 March    Chapter XX contains various clauses which call for explanation. It speaks first of all about the crime of contumely of the imperial majesty. To wit – this crime is a combination of words and action which aims to do harm to the monarch or the monarchy. For example, when a citizen goes out into the square and rouses up the people by his words, he is not punished for the words, but for the action of which the words were the origin or the consequence. But speeches directed against the government, because of the difficulty of proving the crime, ought not to be punished by death, as all crimes against the imperial majesty generally are, but merely by corrective punishments. Writings of a similar sort, however, ought to be punished by death. This ordinance clearly demonstrates that in a despotic government a monarch cannot rely on the loyalty of his citizens. Why not? Because, since despotism does not contain an agreement whereby one person possesses a right and the citizens an obligation, or vice-versa, but authority is wielded by one person by means of force, since, I say, such an agreement has never existed in a despotism, then there cannot exist any obligation either on the part of the citizens. But if we want to uphold authority which derives from predominant force or abuse, then the best way is force and abuse, as Catherine has expressed it by laying down punishments for expressing one’s thoughts. […]

Generally speaking the following may be said about the Empress Catherine’s Instructions. As I have already said before, we find two contradictory principles everywhere in it – the revolutionary spirit, to the influence of which the whole of Europe was then subject, and the spirit of despotism which her vanity would not allow her to renounce. Although she was aware of the superiority of the former, it is nevertheless the latter that prevails in her Instructions. The republican ideas borrowed for the most part from Montesquieu (as Meyer6 rightly remarks) she used as a means of justifying despotism, but for the most part unsuccessfully. Hence we often find in her Instructions ideas which are deficient in proofs or lack them altogether, republican ideas side by side with the most despotic ones and, finally, deductions which are often completely opposed to logic.

From the first glance at the Instructions we recognise that it was the intellectual fruit of a woman who, despite her great intellect, her exalted feelings and her love of truth, was unable to overcome her petty vanity which obscures her great merits. Generally speaking we find in this work more pettiness than soundness, more wit than reason, more vanity than love of truth and, finally, more self-love than love of the people. This latter tendency is apparent throughout the Instructions, in which we find only ordinances concerning public law, i.e. relationships of state (Catherine’s own relationships as its representative), and not civil law, i.e. relationships between private citizens. In conclusion I would say that the Instructions brought more fame to Catherine than benefit to Russia.

7 April, 8 am    I have never kept a diary before, because I could never see the benefit of it. But now that I am concerned with the development of my own faculties, I shall be able to judge from a diary the progress of that development. The diary should contain a table of rules, and it should also define my future activities. In exactly a week’s time I shall be leaving for the country.7 What should I do during that week? Study English and Latin, and Roman law and ordinances: to wit, read The Vicar of Wakefield,8 learning all the unfamiliar words, and go through the first part of the grammar; read the first part of the Institutions9 both for the sake of the language and for the sake of Roman law; finish the rules for my inner education; and win back what I lost at chess.

8 April, 6 am    Hope is bad for a happy man and good for an unhappy one.

Although I have gained a lot since I began to study myself, I am still very dissatisfied with myself. The more progress you make in self-improvement, the more you see the faults in yourself, and Socrates rightly said that the highest state of a man’s perfection is the knowledge that he knows nothing.10

9 April, 6 am    I am quite satisfied with myself as regards yesterday. I am beginning to acquire physical will-power, but my mental will-power is still very weak. With patience and application I am sure that I shall achieve everything I want.

17 April    I have not behaved all this time as I wished to behave. The cause has been, first, my return home from the clinic; and secondly the company which I have begun to associate with more often. I conclude from this that with every change of situation I shall need to think very seriously what external circumstances will influence me in the new situation, and how this influence can be eliminated. If my return home from the clinic could have such an influence on me, what influence will my transition from the life of a student to the life of a landowner have?11

There is bound to be a change in my way of life. But this change must not be the work of external circumstances, but of the mind.12 Here I am faced with the question: what is the purpose of a man’s life? Whatever the point of departure for my reasoning, whatever I take as its source, I always come to the same conclusion: the purpose of a man’s life is the furtherance in every possible way of the all-round development of everything that exists. If I reflect as I look at nature, I see that everything in it is constantly developing and that each constituent part unconsciously furthers the development of the other parts; and man, since he is likewise a part of nature, though one endowed with consciousness, must also, like the other parts – but by the conscious use of his mental faculties – strive for the development of everything that exists. If I reflect as I look at history, I see that the whole human race has constantly striven to achieve this purpose. If I reflect rationally, i.e. if I consider only a man’s mental faculties, I find in each man’s mind this same unconscious striving which is the necessary requirement of his mind. If I reflect as I look at the history of philosophy, I shall find that people everywhere have always come to the same conclusion that the purpose of a man’s life is the all-round development of mankind. If I reflect as I look at theology, I shall find that almost all peoples recognise a perfect existence, to strive to attain which is recognised to be the purpose of all men’s lives. And so I think that I can safely take as the purpose of my life the conscious striving for the all-round development of everything that exists.

I would be the unhappiest of men if I could not find a purpose for my life – a purpose both general and useful – useful because my immortal soul when fully mature will pass naturally into a higher existence and one that is appropriate to it. So now my whole life will be a constant and active striving to achieve this one purpose.

Now I ask myself, what will be the purpose of my life in the country for the next two years? (1) To study the whole course of law necessary for my final examination at the university. (2) To study practical medicine, and some theoretical medicine. (3) To study languages: French, Russian, German, English, Italian and Latin. (4) To study agriculture, both theoretical and practical. (5) To study history, geography and statistics. (6) To study mathematics, the grammar school course. (7) To write a dissertation. (8) To attain an average degree of perfection in music and painting. (9) To write down rules. (10) To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences. (11) To write essays on all the subjects I shall study.

18 April    I wrote down a lot of rules all of a sudden13 and wanted to follow them all, but I wasn’t strong enough to do so. But now I want to set myself one rule only, and to add another one to it only when I’ve got used to following that one. The first rule which I prescribe is as follows: No. 1. Carry out everything you have resolved must be carried out. I haven’t carried out this rule.

19 April    Got up extremely late, and only resolved at 2 o’clock what to do during the day.

14 June, Yasnaya Polyana14    After nearly two months I’m taking up my pen again in order to continue my diary. Oh, it’s difficult for a man to develop what is good in himself under the sole influence of what is bad. […]

16 June    Shall I ever reach the stage of being independent of all extraneous circumstances? In my opinion that would be the greatest perfection; for in a man who is independent of all extraneous influence, spirit will necessarily of its own need take precedence over matter, and then he will attain his destiny. I am beginning to get used to the first rule which I prescribed for myself, and today I will prescribe another one, namely the following: regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and avoid it as much as possible. From whom, indeed, do we derive sensuality, effeminacy, frivolity in everything and a multitude of other vices, if not from women? Who is to blame for the fact that we lose our innate feelings of boldness, resolution, judiciousness, justice, etc., if not women? A woman is more receptive than a man, and therefore women were better than us in virtuous ages; but in the present depraved and corrupt age they are worse than us.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE PHYSICAL WILL

General rule. All actions should be resolutions of the will, and not the unconscious fulfilment of bodily needs. Since we have already said that feelings and reason influence the physical will, these two faculties should determine the rules by which the physical will might operate for its own development. Feelings give it direction and indicate its purpose, but reason gives it the means by which it can achieve this purpose.

Rule 1    Each morning plan everything that you ought to do during the whole day, and carry out everything planned, even if carrying it out involves some harm. Apart from developing the will, this rule will also develop the mind, which will determine the actions of the will more judiciously. 2 Sleep as little as possible (sleep, in my opinion, is a state in which a man’s will is completely non-existent). 3 Put up with all bodily discomforts without giving outward expression to them. 4 Stick to your word. 5 If you once start anything at all, don’t give it up without finishing it. 6 Always keep a table in which to define all the most trivial circumstances of your life, even how many pipes to smoke a day. 7 If you do a thing, harness all your bodily faculties to what it is you are doing. But if your way of life changes, change these rules too.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE EMOTIONAL WILL

(Feelings determine their own purpose.)

The source of all feelings is love in general, which can be divided into two sorts of love: love of ourselves or self-love, and love of everything around us. (I do not admit love of God, because it is impossible to call by the same name a feeling which we have for beings like ourselves or lower than ourselves, and a feeling for the highest, incomprehensible being, unlimited in space, time and power.) These two basic feelings mutally interact on each other. A general rule: all emotional acts should be, not unconscious fulfilments of emotional needs, but resolutions of the will. All feelings which have love of the whole world as their source are good; all feelings which have self-love as their source are bad. Let us look at each category of feeling separately. What feelings derive from self-love? (1) love of fame, (2) love of gain, and (3) love (between a man and a woman).

Now let us see what the rules ought to be for making the will prevail over each of these feelings.

Rules for subordinating to the will the feeling of self-love

Rule 8    Don’t worry about the approbation of people you either don’t know, or else despise. 9    Concern yourself more with yourself than with the opinion of others. 10    Be good, and try not to let anyone know that you are good. (Love of fame is sometimes good for others, but not for oneself.) 11    Always look for the good side in other people, and not the bad. Always tell the truth. If, when you are acting for yourself, your actions seem strange, don’t try to justify them to anyone. The following rule needs to be added to the ones for subordinating the feelings to the will. 12    Never express your feelings outwardly.

Rules for subordinating to the will the feeling of love of gain

Rule 13    Always live less well than you could live. 14    Don’t change your way of life, even if you become ten times richer. 15    Use any increase in your estate not for yourself, but for society.

Rules for subordinating to the will the feeling of love

First rule. Keep away from women. Second rule. Mortify your desires by hard work.

The feelings which derive from love are: (1) love of all creation, (2) love of one’s country, (3) love of individual people.

Rules for subordinating to the will the feeling of universal love

Rule 16    Sacrifice all other feelings of love to universal love, and then the will will demand only the fulfilment of the needs of universal love, and will prevail over it. 17    Sacrifice a tenth part of all you might have at your disposal, for the good of others.

Love yourself and others equally, and give help rather to those who are less fortunate than you, and whom you can more conveniently help.

Rules for subordinating to the will the feelings of love of one’s country and love of individual people

Rule 18    All these feelings are to be subordinated to one another in the order in which they stand here.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE RATIONAL WILL

Rule 19    Decide on all your intellectual occupations at the beginning of the day. 20    When you are studying a subject, try to direct all your intellectual faculties to that subject. 21    Try not to let anything external, physical or emotional, influence the direction of your ideas, but let the ideas determine their own direction. 22    Try not to let any pain, physical or emotional, influence your intellect.

Whatever intellectual occupation you begin, don’t give it up until you have finished it. Since this rule could lead to great abuses, it must be limited here by the following rule: have a purpose for your life as a whole, a purpose for a certain period of your life, a purpose for a certain time, a purpose for a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour and a minute, sacrificing the lower purposes to the higher ones.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE MEMORY

Rule 23    Draw up a plan of everything you are studying, and learn it off by heart. 24    Learn some poems each day in a language you are weak at. 25    Repeat in the evening everything you have learned during the day. Every week, every month and every year examine yourself in everything you have been studying, and if you find you have forgotten anything, begin again from the beginning.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING ACTIVITY

Activity is of three kinds: physical, emotional and intellectual activity. Accordingly, rules for developing activity can also be divided into rules for developing physical, emotional and intellectual activity.

Rules for developing physical activity

Rule 26    Think up as many occupations as possible for yourself. 27    Don’t have any servants. 28    Don’t ask for helpers for a job which you can finish on your own.

Rules for developing emotional activity

Since we have already said that all feelings which derive from self-love are bad, it follows that we ought only to give rules here whereby the activity of feelings which derive from love in general might be developed. 29    Feelings which concern love in general. Let your love for the whole human race be expressed in some form every day. 30    Feelings which concern love of one’s country. Be as useful to your country as you can. 31    Feelings which concern love of individual people. Try to find as many people as possible whom you can love more than all your neighbours. 32    Feelings which concern love of one’s relatives.15

Rules for developing intellectual activity

Rule 32    Don’t build châteaux en Espagne. 33    Try to give your intellect as much food as possible.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES

We have five main intellectual faculties: the faculty of imagination, the faculty of memory, the faculty of comparison, the faculty of drawing conclusions from these comparisons and, finally, the faculty of putting these conclusions in order.

Rules for developing the faculty of imagination

Rule 34    All games which require reflection are very good for developing this faculty.

I have already spoken about rules for developing the faculty of memory.

Rules for developing the faculty of comparison

Rule 35    Study carefully the objects you are comparing. 36    Compare any new idea you come across with the ideas you already know. Justify all abstract ideas by examples.

Rules for developing the faculty of drawing conclusions

Rule 36    Study mathematics. 37    Study philosophy. 38    Make critical notes when reading any philosophical work.

Rules for developing the faculty of putting conclusions in order

Rule 39    Study your own being and its organisation. 40    Reduce to one general conclusion all your information about any one branch of knowledge. 41    Compare all conclusions with each other, so that no one conclusion should contradict any other. 42    Write compositions which are not trivial, but scholarly.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING LOFTY FEELINGS AND ELIMINATING BASE ONES, OR, TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY, RULES FOR DEVELOPING THE FEELING OF LOVE AND LIMINATING THE FEELING OF SELF-LOVE

General rule: the more you fulfil any one of your needs, the more it increases, and the less you fulfil it, the less active it becomes. Rule 4216    Love all people equally, not excluding yourself from this love. 43    Love each neighbour as yourself, but love two neighbours more than yourself.

RULES FOR DEVELOPING SOUND JUDGEMENT

Examine every object from all aspects. Examine every act from the aspect of its harmfulness and its benefit. With every act, consider how many ways it can be done and which of these ways is best. Consider the causes of every phenomenon and the possible consequences of it.

Notes

1 Of Kazan University.

2 Catherine the Great’s Instructions to the Commission for the Composition of a Plan for a New Code of Laws, known for short as the Nakaz (Instruction), was first published in 1767. Catherine borrowed many of her ideas on enlightened despotism and on crime and punishment from Montesquieu and Beccaria, and Tolstoy had been set the task by his professor of civil law at Kazan University of comparing the Nakaz with Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois – a task which he claims to have interested him greatly. For a full text of the Nakaz see: Catherine the Great’s Instruction to the Legislative Commission, 1767; volume II of Russia under Catherine the Great, ed. P. Dukes, Newtonville, Mass., 1977.

3 Catherine does not say this.

4 Literally ‘slavery’, but translated here and in similar contexts as ‘serfdom’.

5 Who were proud of the fact that ‘their ancestors had saved Rome’.

6 Professor of civil law at Kazan University.

7 To the Yushkovs’ estate near Kazan.

8 Oliver Goldsmith’s novel is not included in the list of books which Tolstoy later claimed to have made an impression on him at different periods of his life. (Letters, II, 484)

9 Justinian’s Code of Laws (Corpus juris civilis).

10 As reported by Diogenes.

11 Tolstoy had already requested permission to withdraw from the university, and left Kazan for Yasnaya Polyana on 23 April.

12 Dusha (‘soul’, ‘heart’, ‘mind’) has often been translated as ‘mind’, especially in contexts where, as here, dushevny is also used in the meaning of ‘mental’.

13 See p. 000. These rules were written down in a separate notebook betwen March and May.

14 Tolstoy reached Yasnaya Polyana on 1 May.

15 No rule is formulated, and another Rule 32 follows.

16 A second Rule 42.

1850

14 June 1850, Yasnaya Polyana    Once again I have taken up my diary, and once again with new fervour and a new purpose. How many times is that? I can’t remember. Never mind, perhaps I’ll drop it again; but it’s a pleasant occupation and it will be pleasant to re-read it, just as it was pleasant to re-read my old ones. There are lots of thoughts in one’s head, and some of them seem very remarkable, but when you examine them they turn out to be nonsense; others on the other hand seem sensible – and that’s what a diary is needed for. On the basis of one’s diary it’s very convenient to judge oneself.

Then again, since I find it necessary to determine all my occupations in advance, a diary is necessary for that too. I’d like to get used to determining my way of life in advance, not just for a day but for a year, for several years, or even for life; it’s too difficult, almost impossible. But I’ll try; first for a day, then for two days – for as many days as I remain true to my resolutions, for that many days I shall plan ahead. By these resolutions I mean not moral rules independent of time and place, rules which never change and which I draw up specially, but resolutions which are temporal and local: where to live and for how long, what to study and when.

Occasions may arise when these resolutions may be alterable; but I will only permit such deviations when they have been determined by the rules; and so in case of any deviations, I will explain their causes in my diary. […]

The last three years which I have spent so dissolutely sometimes seem to me very interesting, poetical and, in part, useful; I’ll try to recall and record them as frankly and in as much detail as possible. This will be a third purpose for my diary.

17 June    Got up before 8, did nothing till 10, read and wrote my diary from 10 to 12; from 12 to 6 – lunch, a rest, a few thoughts about music, dinner; 6 to 8 – music; 8 to 10 – the estate.

This is the second day I’ve been idle, and haven’t carried out what I intended. Why? I don’t understand it. However, I don’t despair; I’ll force myself. Yesterday, apart from not carrying out what I had intended, I also broke my own rule. But now I won’t break my rule again of not having a woman in the country, except on certain occasions which I won’t look for, but won’t let pass either.

When I’m in an apathetic mood, I’ve noticed that any philosophical work greatly stimulates me to activity – I’m reading Montesquieu now. It seems to me that I’ve become idle because I’ve started too many things, and so in future I won’t move on to another occupation till I’ve carried out what I intended to do. So as not to be able to make the excuse that I haven’t managed to draw up a system, I’ll enter in my diary some general rules, and also some rules with regard to music and the estate.

Some general rules. Don’t put off what you propose to do on the pretext of some distraction or diversion, but start the job at once, if only superficially. Ideas will come. For example, if you propose to write out rules, take out an exercise book, sit down at a table and don’t get up until you’ve started and finished.

Rules with regard to music. Play every day: (1) all twenty four scales, (2) all chords and arpeggios in two octaves, (3) all the inversions, (4) the chromatic scale. Learn one piece and don’t go on as long as there is a passage where you have to stop. Transpose all cadenzas into all keys and learn them. Play at least four pages of music each day, and don’t go on until you have found the proper doigté [fingering].

With regard to the estate. Think about every order from the point of view of its usefulness or harmfulness. Personally supervise every part of the estate each day. Don’t be in a hurry to give orders, to scold or to punish, but remember that on the estate patience is needed more than anything else. Only cancel an order you have given, even one that has proved harmful, on the basis of your own judgement and in case of absolute necessity.

Notes This is the third winter that I have lived in Moscow, and lived in a very disorderly manner, without a job, without any occupations and without a purpose; and I have lived like this, not because, as is often said and written, everyone in Moscow lives like this, but simply because I liked this sort of life. But it is partly the case too that the situation of a young man in Moscow society disposes him to idleness. I mean a young man who combines certain qualifications, namely education, a good name and an income of some ten or twenty thousand. The life of a young man who combines these qualifications is very pleasant and completely carefree if he is not employed, i.e. not seriously, but only on paper, and if he likes being idle. All drawing rooms are open to him and he is entitled to aspire to any marriageable girl; no young man could stand higher in the general opinion of society. But let this same gentleman go to Petersburg, and he will fret about why S. and G. Gorchakov were at court, and he wasn’t; or how to get into Baroness Z’s soirées or Countess A’s reception, etc.; and he won’t get in unless he can rely on the help of some countess to gain entry to their salons. Or unless he has grown up there, or unless he can endure humiliations, exploit every opportunity, and worm his way in with difficulty, but without honour.

18 June    Got up at 7.30; did nothing before 11; 11 to 12 – music; 2 to 5 – the estate; 6 to 8 – music; 8 to 11 – toilet, music and reading.

19 June    Yesterday went quite well, I carried out almost everything; was only dissatisfied with one thing: I can’t overcome my sensuality, the more so since this passion has now become a habit with me. […]

8 December, Moscow1    I wrote my diary for five days and haven’t touched it for five months. I’ll try to remember what I did during that time and why I evidently got so behind with my occupations. During that time a great revolution took place in me: a quiet life in the country, my old follies and the need to busy myself with my affairs have borne fruit. I have stopped building castles in Spain and making plans which are beyond any human strength to carry out. But the chief factor, and the one most favourable to this change of beliefs, is that I no longer rely on my reason alone to achieve anything, and no longer despise the forms generally accepted by all people. Previously everything ordinary seemed unworthy of me; but now, on the contrary, I hardly accept any belief as good and just until I have seen it applied and carried out in practice, and applied by many people. It’s strange how I could have despised what constitutes man’s chief asset – the faculty of understanding other people’s beliefs and seeing them put into practice by other people. How could I have given my reason a free rein, without testing it and without applying it at all? In a word – and a very simple one – I’ve sown my wild oats and I’m a little older.

My self-love contributed a lot to this change. Having plunged into a dissipated life, I noticed that people who were inferior to me in all else were far superior to me in this sphere; I was hurt, and I convinced myself that this was not my destiny. Perhaps two shocks also contributed to this. The first was my losing money to Ogaryov,2 which threw my affairs into such complete disarray that it even seemed that there was no hope of putting them in order again; and then there was a fire which forced me against my will to act. Winning money back put a brighter complexion on these acts. One thing I do think, and that is that I’ve become too cold. Only rarely, especially when I’m going to bed, do I have moments when feeling craves expression. Also in moments of drunkenness. But I’ve promised myself not to get drunk. I won’t continue my notes now because I’m busy with affairs in Moscow, but if I have any free time I’ll write a story about gipsy life.3

I’ve noticed another important change in me: I’ve become more self-assured, i.e. I’ve stopped feeling shy; I suppose that’s because I have only one purpose in view (interest), and in striving towards it I have been able to evaluate myself and have acquired an awareness of my own worth, which does so much to facilitate relations with people. […]

Rules for society. Choose difficult situations, always try to control a conversation, speak loudly, calmly and distinctly, try to begin and end a conversation yourself. Seek the company of people higher in the world than yourself. Before seeing people of this sort, prepare yourself for the sort of relations you are going to have with them. Don’t be embarrassed about speaking in front of strangers. Don’t continually change the conversation from French to Russian or from Russian to French. Remember that when you find yourself in company where you feel embarrassed you must put pressure on yourself, especially at first. At a ball, ask the most important ladies to dance. If you feel shy, don’t become flustered, but carry on. Be as cold as possible and don’t betray any impressions.

Occupations for to-day, 114    Stay at home, read, in the evening write out rules for society and a synopsis of the story. Occupations for 8⁴ December. Read in the morning, then the diary until dinner and a schedule of things to do and visits for Sunday. After dinner, read and have a bath; in the evening read and, if I’m not too tired, the story. In the morning, immediately after coffee, letters to the office, Auntie5 and the Perfilyevs.6

13 December    Although I made no entry in my diary for 12 December, I spent the day well – i.e. not in idleness. I visited the authorities and the clubs, and as a result became convinced, first, that I’ll be a success in society the way I’m going at the moment, and that as for gambling I think I’ll give it up altogether. I think I no longer have a passion for gambling, but I won’t answer for it: I need to put it to the test. I won’t look for an opportunity, but I won’t let a suitable one pass. […]

15 December    I’m very dissatisfied with yesterday. First because I did nothing about the Trustee Council;7 secondly, because I wrote nothing; and thirdly – I began to weaken in my beliefs and to yield to other people’s influence.

Must get up very early, read in the morning, then do my diary, writing and letters, at 12 o’clock go to the Council, Yevreinov’s, Kryukov’s, Anikeyeva’s and Lvov’s; dine at home and do some more writing; then the theatre and back home to work again.

Rules for society. Don’t call a person by different names, but always address him in the same manner.

Don’t tolerate the slightest unpleasantness or sarcasm from anyone, without paying it back twofold.

16 December    Carried out everything except the writing. Must always get up early. Write letters and the story this morning, go round to the Kalymazhny mews8 and the baths, send somone to the Council and to Lvov’s, dine at home, play cards in the evening at Prince Andrey Ivanovich’s9 and flirt with the princess. Buy some cloth and music after dinner.

17 December    Get up early, work on the story and a letter to Dyakov,10 go to mass at 10 o’clock at the Zachatyevsky convent, call on Anna Petrovna and Yakovleva.11 Then on to Koloshin’s,12 send for some music, draft a letter to the office, dine at home, work at music and my rules, and go to the wenches and the club in the evening. […]

21 December    […] Must not read novels.

24 December    […] Rules. Only play cards in emergencies. Talk as little as possible about myself. Speak loudly and distinctly. Rules. Take exercise every day. In accordance with the laws of religion, don’t have any women.

26 December    Spent the day badly; went to the gipsies.

29 December    I’m living a completely brutish life; although not completely dissolute, I’ve abandoned nearly all my occupations and am in very low spirits. Must get up early, receive nobody before 2 o’clock and not go out; at 2 o’clock go to Chulkov’s and the Dyakovs’, have dinner and then to the Prince13 to ask for a post. Must think at leisure about my future actions in any new post. In the morning write my story, read, play the piano or write about music; in the evening – rules or the gipsies.

31 December, Pokrovskoye14    Travelled on 31 December. Saw Shcherbatov and decided to take a posting station;15 visited the postmaster, but haven’t had a really serious talk with Shcherbatov yet.

Notes

1 Tolstoy moved to Moscow from Yasnaya Polyana on 5 December.

2 V. I. Ogaryov, the son of I. M. Ogaryov, a near neighbour and close friend of Tolstoy’s father.

3 The story was never finished and has not survived.

4 One of these dates is clearly wrong. If the first is correct, the second should presumably read 12 December.

5 Tatyana Alexandrovna Yergolskaya, a relative of the Tolstoy family who assumed responsibility for the Tolstoy children after their father’s death, although not their legal guardian, and continued to live at Yasnaya Polyana after Tolstoy’s marriage until her death in 1874. (Letters, I, 2)

6 S. V. Perfilyev and his family. His son, V. S. Perfilyev, was a contemporary of Tolstoy’s and married Tolstoy’s second cousin. He later became Governor of Moscow.

7 The Council held the mortgage of the Tolstoys’ estate at the time.

8 A riding-school in the centre of Moscow.

9 Prince A. I. Gorchakov, a distant relative of Tolstoy’s and an infantry general under whom Tolstoy’s father had served. He is thought to have been a model for Prince Ivan Ivanovich in Childhood.

10 D. A. Dyakov got to know Tolstoy in Kazan, and according to Tolstoy their friendship provided him with material for his description of the friendship between Nikolenka Irtenev and Nekhlyudov in Youth.

11 Both distant relatives of Tolstoy’s; the former, Princess A. P. Gorchakova, was at the time a nun in the Zachatyevsky convent in Moscow.

12 S. P. Koloshin, another distant relative of Tolstoy’s and a minor author and editor.

13 Prince A. I. Gorchakov.

14 The estate of Tolstoy’s brother-in-law, V. P. Tolstoy, some fifty miles from Yasnaya Polyana.

15 Tolstoy soon went back on his decision to rent a posting station near Yasnaya Polyana when his conditions were not accepted by his partner-to-be Prince Shcherbatov.

1851

1 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Visited Pokrovskoye on 1 January, and saw Nikolenka;1 he hasn’t changed, but I’ve changed a great deal, and I might have had some influence on him if he wasn’t so strange; either he doesn’t notice anything and doesn’t love me, or he’s trying to pretend that he doesn’t.

13 January, Moscow    I’ve given up the idea of the posting station – I couldn’t face it. The provision train has arrived.2 Saw Nikolay off. Behaved badly.

Rule – make copies of all letters and keep them at home in proper order.

17 January    Since the 14th I’ve behaved unsatisfactorily. Didn’t go to the Stolypins’ ball; lent some money and so am left without a bean; and all because of my weakness of character. Rule. Don’t play eralash3 for less than twenty-five copecks a time. I’ve no money at all; the time for paying many promissory notes has already passed; I’m also beginning to notice that my stay in Moscow is of no advantage to me in any respect, and that I’m living far above my income. […]

Of the three methods which have occurred to me for putting my affairs in order, I’ve neglected nearly all, namely: (1) joining a gambling circle and playing while I have the money. (2) entering high society and marrying under certain conditions. (3) finding a profitable place to serve. Now a fourth method occurs to me – namely borrowing money from Kireyevsky. No one of these four things contradicts any other, and I must act. I must write to the country and get them to send 150 silver roubles, go to Ozerov’s and offer to sell him a horse and give instructions to have it advertised in the papers too. Must call on the countess4 and bide my time, find out about invitations to the Zakrevskys’ ball and order a new frockcoat. Must think and write a lot before the ball. Must visit Prince Sergey Dmitriyevich5 and talk about a post, and also Prince Andrey Ivanovich6 and ask for a post. Must pawn my watch. […]

18 January    […] Write the story of my day.7

25 January    I’ve fallen in love or imagine that I have; went to a party and lost my head. Bought a horse which I don’t need at all. Rules. Don’t offer a price for a thing you don’t need. On arriving at a ball, ask someone to dance at once and take a turn with her at a waltz or a polka. Think about ways of putting my affairs in order this evening. Stay at home.

28 February    I’ve lost a lot of time. At first I was attracted by worldly pleasures, but then I felt empty at heart again; and I’ve given up my occupations – i.e. occupations which had my own person as their object. For a long time I was tormented by the fact that I had no heartfelt thought or feeling to determine the whole direction of my life – I took everything just it came; but now, I think, I have found a heartfelt idea and a permanent aim – the development of the will – an aim towards which I’ve long been striving but which I only now recognised, not simply as an idea, but as one which is close to my heart.

Programme for tomorrow. Get up at 9 o’clock. Work on the encyclopaedia8 and write a synopsis. Go to a funeral, then gymnastics, have dinner, and from 6 to 12 work alone or with Koloshin. Don’t smoke. Remember that carrying out what I’ve propsed to do constitutes the whole happiness of my life, and vice versa.

1 March    Rule. In difficult circumstances always act on first impressions. Get up at 8.30, work till 12. From 12 to 1 – music; from 1 to 2 – work; from 2.30 to 6 – rest. Don’t go in search of friends; evening at home; work.

2 March    I’ve begun to weaken a bit, mainly because it was beginning to seem that however hard I work on myself, nothing will ever come of me. And this thought occurred to me because I was exclusively occupied with exerting my will, and not bothering about the form in which it manifested itself. I’ll try to correct this mistake. Now I want to prepare for my master’s examination; consequently this is the form in which my will must manifest itself; but it’s not enough to take up a notebook and read; it’s necessary to prepare oneself for it, necessary to study systematically; it’s necessary to get hold of questions on all subjects and compile synopses on them. It’s necessary to try and find a student who can give instruction and explanations.

First of all tomorrow morning, from 8 to 12, read the ‘Encyclopaedia’, with Nevolin’s comments; at 12 go and find a student; at 2 – gymnastics; from 6 till night time work at the ‘Encyclopaedia’9 or something else, with an hour for music. Rule. Remember that in any affair the first and only condition on which success depends is patience, and that the thing which causes most hindrance, and which has done great harm to me especially, is haste.

7 March    I’ve found a useful purpose for my diary apart from defining future activities – to give an account of each day from the point of view of those weaknesses which I’d like to correct.

Today.    Took a long time to get up this morning, shrank from it, and somehow tried to deceive myself. Read novels when there were other things to do. Said to myself: ‘You must have a drink of coffee’, as though it was impossible to do anything without first drinking coffee. With Koloshin I’m not calling a spade a spade; although we both feel that preparing for the exam is a waste of time, I didn’t tell him so openly. Received Poiret10 over-familiarly and allowed myself to be influenced by our not being well acquainted, the presence of Koloshin and a misplaced grand-seigneur-ism. Did my gymnastics hurriedly. Didn’t knock long enough at the Gorchakovs’ out of fausse honte [self-consciousness]. Made a bad exit from the Koloshin’s drawing-room; was in too much of a hurry, tried to say something very polite – it didn’t come off. At the riding-school I succumbed to mauvaise humeur and forgot what I was doing because of a young lady. Tried to show off at Begichev’s and, to my shame, tried to imitate Gorchakov. Fausse honte. Didn’t remind Ukhtomsky about the money. At home I rushed from the piano to a book, and from the book to a pipe and a meal. Didn’t give the peasants a thought. Can’t remember whether I lied. Probably I did. Didn’t go to the Perfilyevs’ and the Panins’ due to thoughtlessness. All today’s mistakes can be put down to the following propensities: (1) Indecision, lack of energy. (2) Self-delusion, i.e. anticipating the bad in something, and not thinking about it carefully. (3) Haste. (4) Fausse honte, i.e. a fear of doing something unbecoming, resulting from a one-sided view of things. (5) Bad humour, resulting for the most part (i) from haste, (ii) from a superficial view of things. (6) Fickleness, i.e. a tendency to forget near and useful aims in order to give oneself airs. (7) Imitativeness. (8) Inconstancy. (9) Thoughtlessness. […]

8 March    Took a long time to wake up again, but got the better of myself eventually. Wrote a letter to Nikolenka (thoughtlessly and hurriedly), and one to the office, in the same stupid form which I’ve now adopted (self-delusion). Did my gymnastics carelessly, i.e. took too little account of my strength; this weakness I’ll call presumption, a retreat from reality. Frequently looked at myself in the mirror. It’s stupid, physical self-love, which can only lead to something bad and ridiculous. Was shy again with Poiret (self-delusion). Acted feebly at the stud, bowed first to Golitsyn instead of walking straight on, the way I was going. Absent-mindedness. Praised myself at gymnastics (self-praise). Wanted to give Kobylin my real opinion about myself (petty vanity). Ate too much at dinner (gluttony). Went to Volkonsky’s without finishing what I was doing (lack of continuity). Ate too many sweet things, sat up too late. Told lies. Occupations for the 9th. […] Keep a journal of my weaknesses (a Franklin journal).11 […]

10 March    Didn’t get up till late. Spoke badly to Ozerov and tried to foist a horse off on him. Meanness. Poiret. Deceit and haste. Lied to Begichev that I knew the Siberian Gorchakovs. Left my fur coat behind (haste and carelessness). Cowardice at the Council. Vanity at gymnastics. Overconfidence and affectation at Lvov’s. Didn’t copy out any extracts – laziness. I’m writing my journal hastily and imprecisely.

20 March    […] The two chief passions which I’ve noticed in myself are a passion for gambling and vanity, which is the more dangerous because it assumes a countless multitude of different forms: a desire to show off, thoughtlessness, absent-mindedness, etc. This evening I must re-read my diary from the day I arrived in Moscow, make some general notes and check my financial expenses and debts in Moscow.

I came to Moscow with three aims. (1) To gamble. (2) To marry. (3) To obtain a post. The first is base and mean and, thank God, after reviewing the state of my affairs and renouncing my prejudices, I’ve decided to remedy my affairs and put them in order by the sale of part of my property. The second, thanks to the wise advice of my brother Nikolenka, I’ve put aside until I’m forced to it either by love or reason or even fate, which cannot be entirely resisted. The last is impossible until after two years’ service in the Province, and to tell the truth, although I’d like it, I’d like many other things which are incompatible with it; and so I’ll wait for fate itself to place me in that situation.

During this time I’ve had many weaknesses. The main thing is, I’ve paid little attention to moral rules, being distracted by rules which are necessary for success. Then I’ve been taking too narrow a view of things: for example, I’ve been setting myself a lot of rules which could all be reduced to one thing – not to be vain. I’ve been forgetting that a necessary condition for success is self-assurance, and a contempt for trivialities which can only come about as a result of moral superiority.

22 March    Worked quite well except for lack of firmness and a desire to show off. Dined at home. Did nothing and thought nothing about the money.12 Self-delusion. Wrote extracts,13 notes and my diary, all too hurriedly. I could write a good book: a life of Tatyana Alexandrovna.14 […] Gymnastics is necessary for the development of all faculties. Gymnastics of the memory. Learn something by heart every day. English.

23 March    Got up at 8.30. Read and wrote; didn’t revise what I’d written. Self-delusion. Lazy at gymnastics. Cowardly at Koloshin’s, expressed my opinions too obviously at Beer’s. Spoke about my own way of life – desire to show off. Dined with Volkonsky and talked a lot about myself – desire to show off. In the evening read unsystematically – thoughtlessness. Didn’t go up to Zakrevskaya at the concert – cowardice. Bowed to Ukhtomsky – cowardice. Couldn’t bow to Lvova – cowardice. Sat up at home with Kostenka till after 12 – lack of firmness. Rule. Try to form a style: (1) in conversation, (2) in writing. […]

24 March    […] Occupations for the 25th. From 10 to 11 – yesterday’s diary and reading. From 11 to 12 – gymnastics. From 12 to 1 – English. Beklemishev and Beer from 1 to 2. From 2 to 4 – riding. From 4 to 6 – dinner. From 6 to 8 – reading. From 8 to 10 – writing. Translate something from a foreign language into Russian to develop memory and style. Write an account of today with all the impressions and thoughts it gives rise to.15

27 March    […] Marya called for her passport. I feel I refrained from … only out of shame and the fact that she had pimples on her face. So I must note down sensuality.

30 March    Got up at 7. Wrote till 10, badly. At 10 went to a funeral. Stood badly in church – vanity. On the Tverskoy Boulevard till 4. Didn’t bow to Orlova – cowardice. Went riding in the country. Had dinner and read. Went to bed early because of over-eating and over-indulgence.

6 April, Pirogovo16    Got nothing done. Lied and bragged a lot, was casual and absent-minded in my preparation for communion. Very much distracted by the thought of the Gelke affair; I’ll write about it after dinner today.17 Want to write some sermons.

7 April    Lazy and weak. Seryozhenka is living with Masha.18 Tomorrow is Easter Sunday.

8 April    Wrote a sermon, was lazy, weak and cowardly.

15 April    Got up late, at 8 o’clock – laziness and irresolution. Did my gymnastics well. Played the piano too hurriedly -read likewise. Dined and argued with Auntie. Too little fierté [pride]. Roamed about the whole evening after dinner and had sensual desires.

17 April    Wrote nothing – laziness got the better of me!! Today I want to begin a story of a day’s hunting. Had a long talk with Auntie. She’s very kind and very high-minded, but very one-sided. She feels and thinks in one groove only, and beyond that groove there’s nothing. I’m tormented by sensuality. Not so much sensuality as force of habit. I’m sure that anywhere else I wouldn’t even have looked at the woman who is now making me struggle violently with passion and succumb to it more and more often, just because I’ve already had her here. There’s no better way of finding out whether you are making progress in anything than by testing yourself on your former way of doing things. To find out whether you have grown or not you need to measure yourself against an old mark. After four months’ absence I’m back in the same framework. As far as laziness is concerned I’m almost the same. Sensuality too. In the ability to deal with subordinates, I’m a bit better. But where I have made progress is in my frame of mind.

18 April    I couldn’t refrain; I beckoned to something pink which, in the distance, seemed to me very nice, and opened the door at the back. She came in. I couldn’t see her, it was vile and repulsive, I even hate her because I’ve broken my rules on her account. Generally speaking you nurse a feeling very like hatred for people to whom you can’t indicate that you don’t like them, but who are entitled to assume that you are well disposed towards them. A sense of duty and of revulsion spoke against it; lust and conscience19 spoke in favour. The latter won.

Terrible remorse; I’ve never felt it so strongly before. That’s a step forward.

19 April    Nikolenka, Valeryan and Masha arrived.20 Tomorrow I’ll go to Tula, decide about the service,21 and give up Vorotynka22 for 16,000 roubles. I’ve become even more religious in the country.

20 May En route from Saratov to Astrakhan.23    From 20 April right up to 20 May I haven’t kept my dairy. I can recall this month, however, day by day. It’s been very interesting.

The recent time I spent in Moscow was interesting because of the direction I was taking, my contempt for society and my incessant inner struggle. […]

30 May Starogladkovskaya24    I’m writing at 10 o’clock at night on 30 June25 in the village of Starogladkovskaya. How did I get here? I don’t know. Why? I don’t know either. I’d like to write a lot: about the journey from Astrakhan to the village, the Cossacks, the cowardice of the Tatars and the steppe, but Nikolenka and the officers are going to supper at Alexeyev’s,26 and I’m going too. I’m disposed to like the captain,27 but to keep away from the others. They may be nasty.

March-May, 185128

[…] Lamartine says that writers neglect literature for the people, that the number of readers is greater among the masses of the people, that all those who write do so for the circle in which they live, but that the people in whose midst there are men and women craving for enlightenment do not have any literature and will not have until writers begin to write for the people.

I won’t speak about books which are written with the purpose of finding many readers – they are not literary works, but products of their authors’ craft – nor about academic books or textbooks which don’t come within the province of poetry. (Where the boundaries are between prose and poetry I shall never be able to understand; although there is a question about this subject in literature, I can’t understand the answer. Poetry is verse. Prose is not verse. Or poetry is everything except business documents and textbooks.) In order to be good, all works of literature ought to be sung from the soul of their author, as Gogol says about his farewell tale (‘it was sung from my soul’).29 But how could anything accessible to the people be sung from the souls of authors who for the most part stand on the highest pinnacle of development? The people wouldn’t understand them. Even if an author were to try to descend to the popular level, the people still wouldn’t understand him. Just as a sixteen-year-old boy, when he reads a scene in a novel about the seduction of the heroine, isn’t roused to a feeling of indignation by it and doesn’t put himself in the unfortunate woman’s position, but involuntarily transfers himself to the role of the seducer and delights in a feeling of sensuality – so too would the people understand something completely different from what you wanted to say to them. Could the people understand The Hapless Anton30 or Geneviève? The words would be accessible as expressions of thought, but the thoughts themselves would be inaccessible. The people have their own literature – beautiful and inimitable; but it is not counterfeit, it is sung from the heart of the people themselves. They have no need of higher literature, and they have none. But try and put yourself on exactly the same level as the people, and they will only despise you.

Let the higher circles press forward, and the people will not lag behind; they will not merge with the higher circles, but they too will make progress. Pourquoi dire des subtilités, quand il y a encore tant de grosses vérités à dire [Why speak about subtleties when there are still so many important truths to tell]? Men sought for the philosopher’s stone and found many chemical compounds. They now seek virtue from the standpoint of socialism, i.e. the absence of vice, and they will find many useful moral truths. […]

How your view of life changes when you live not for yourself, but for others! Life ceases to be an end and becomes a means. Unhappiness makes man virtuous – virtue makes him happy – happiness makes him vicious.

There are two sorts of happiness: the happiness of the virtuous and the happiness of the vain. The first stems from virtue, the second from fate. It is necessary for virtue to strike deep roots so that the latter should not have a harmful influence on the former. Happiness based on vanity is destroyed by it: fame by slander, wealth by fraud. But happiness based on virtue cannot be destroyed by anything. […]

One should not say that life is an ordeal, or that death is a blessing which removes us from all sorrows. This is neither a comfort when one loses one’s nearest and dearest, nor a moral precept. To sympathise with such a view is impossible except in a state of despair, and despair is a weakness of faith and of trust in God. As a moral precept this idea is too painful for a young soul, and is bound to shake its faith in virtue. If a man loses a creature he has loved he can love another; if he does not, it is because he is too proud. The source of evil is in each man’s soul. […]

Elderly aunts and uncles consider themselves bound to pay for the right to have nephews by issuing exhortations, however useless they may be. They are even displeased when their nephews’ behaviour is such that their advice is not appropriate; they think they have been robbed of their due.

There is nothing more painful than to see sacrifices made for you by people with whom you are connected and have to live with, especially sacrifices which you don’t ask for, and from people you don’t love. The most offensive form of egoism is self-sacrifice. […]

Everyone describes human weaknesses and the ridiculous sides of people by transferring them to fictitious personalities, sometimes successfully, according to the writer’s talent, but for the most part unnaturally. Why? Because we know human weaknesses from ourselves, and in order to display them truthfully we need to display them in ourselves, because a given weakness only goes with a given personality. Few people have the power to do this. They try to distort the personality to which they transfer their own weaknesses as much as possible, so that they themselves should not be recognised. Would it not be better to say straight out: ‘This is the sort of man I am. If you don’t like me I’m very sorry, but God made me this way.’ But nobody wants to take the first step in case people might say, for example: ‘You think that if you are evil and ridiculous, we must be so too.’ And so everyone remains silent. It’s like going to a ball in the provinces: everyone is afraid of arriving first and so they all arrive late. If only everyone would show himself as he really is, then what was weak and ridiculous about him before would cease to be so. Surely it would be an enormous blessing to be rid, if only in part, of that terrible yoke – fear of the ridiculous. How many, many true pleasures do we lose because of that foolish terror? […]

2 June    My God, my God, what sad and depressing days! And why am I so sad? No, not so much sad, as hurt by the awareness of being sad, without knowing what I’m sad about. I used to think it was because of inactivity, of idleness. No, it’s not because of idleness, but of the situation I’m in that I can’t do anything. The main thing is that I can’t find anything like the sadness I feel anywhere at all – neither in descriptions, nor even in my own imagination. I can imagine that it’s possible to be sad about a loss, a parting, a disappointed hope. I can understand that it’s possible to be disillusioned: that everything begins to pall and that one is disappointed so often in one’s expectations and that there’s nothing left to look forward to. I can understand, when one’s soul harbours love for all that is beautiful, for men and women, for nature, and one is ready to express it all and ask for sympathy but finds nothing but coldness and ridicule and secret malice against people – that sadness can result. I can understand the sadness of a man whose lot is hard and who is oppressed by a painful, venomous feeling of envy. All this I can understand, and from one aspect there is some good in all such sadness.

But the sadness which I feel is something I cannot understand or imagine to myself. I have nothing to regret, almost nothing to wish for, no reason to be angry with fate. I can understand how wonderfully I could live on my imagination. But no. My imagination paints nothing for me – I have no dreams. There is a certain gloomy delight in despising people – but I am not even capable of that; I don’t give them a thought at all: sometimes I think that such and such a man has a kind, simple soul; then I think: no, better not seek to know, why make mistakes! I’m not disillusioned either – everything amuses me, but the trouble is that I turned to the serious things in life too early, turned to them when I was not yet ripe for them, but could feel and understand; and so I have no strong faith in friendship, love or beauty, and have become disillusioned about the important things in life; and yet in trivial matters I am still a child.

Now I think, as I recall all the unpleasant moments of my life which are the only ones which come into my head when despondent, that there are too few pleasures and too many desires, and that man is too apt to picture happiness to himself, and that fate too often buffets him painfully for no reason and touches him too painfully on the raw for him to love life; and then there is something especially sweet and grand about indifference to life, and I rejoice in this feeling. How strong I seem to be in the face of all this, in the firm conviction that there is nothing to look forward to here except death; and yet I can now think with pleasure of the fact that I have ordered a saddle on which to ride in my Circassian coat, and that I shall run after Cossack women and be reduced to despair because my left moustache is worse than my right, and spend two hours in front of the mirror putting it straight. But I can’t write either, judging by this – it’s stupid.

Et puis cette horrible nécessité de traduire par des mots et aligner en pattes de mouches des pensées ardentes, vives, mobiles, comme des rayons de soleil teignant les nuages de l’air. Où fuir le métier, Grand Dieu! [And then this horrible need to express in words and to string together in sprawling handwriting passionate, vital, shifting thoughts which are like the sun’s rays, tingeing the clouds in the sky. Great God, how can one escape one’s profession!]31

Et quae fuerunt vitia‚ mores sunt [And what were once vices are now the custom] (Seneca).32

La conversation est un trafic; et si l’on l’entrepend sans fonds, la balance penche et le commerce tombe (Sterne). […]

8 June Stary Yurt33    Love and religion – these are two feelings which are pure and elevated. I don’t know what men call love. If love is what I have read and heard about it, then I’ve never experienced it. I used to see a boarding-school girl called Zinaida,34 and I liked her; but I hardly knew her (ugh! what crude things words are! how stupid and vulgar do feelings appear when once expressed). I stayed in Kazan for a week. If I had been asked why I stayed in Kazan, what I enjoyed there or why I was so happy, I wouldn’t have said it was because I was in love. I wasn’t aware of it. I think that it’s precisly this unawareness which is love’s chief feature and which constitutes its whole charm. How morally unencumbered I was at the time. I didn’t feel all that burden of trivial passions which spoils all the pleasures of life. I never said a word to her about love, but I am so sure that she knew my feelings that if she did love me, I attribute it only to the fact that she understood me. All impulses of the soul are pure and elevated to begin with. Reality destroys their innocence and charm. My relations with Zinaida have remained at the stage of the pure yearning of two souls for one another. But perhaps you doubt that I love you, Zinaida? If so, forgive me; I am to blame; I could have assured you with a single word.

Shall I really never see her again? Shall I really find out one day that she has married some Beketov or other? Or, sadder still, shall I see her looking cheerful in her little cap, with those same clever, open, cheerful and loving eyes? I won’t abandon my plans in order to go and marry her; I’m not quite convinced that she can constitute my happiness; but still I’m in love. If not, why these joyous memories which cheer me up, why this way of looking that I always have whenever I see and feel something beautiful? Should I write her a letter? I don’t know her patronymic, and perhaps because of that I shall be deprived of happiness. It’s ridiculous. We forgot to bring a pleated shirt with us, and because of that I’m not doing military service. If we had forgotten to bring a peaked cap, I wouldn’t have thought of presenting myself to Vorontsov35 and getting a post in Tiflis. It would have been impossible in a fur cap! Now God knows what is in store for me. I surrender myself to His will. I don’t know what is necessary for my happiness or what happiness is. Do you remember the Archbishop’s Garden, Zinaida – the side path? It was on the tip of my tongue to declare my love, and on yours too. It was up to me to begin; but do you know why, I think, I said nothing? I was so happy that I had nothing to wish for, and I was afraid to spoil my happiness … not mine, but ours. That sweet time will always remain the best memory of my life. But what an empty and vain creature is man! When I am asked about the time I spent in Kazan I reply in an offhand tone: ‘Yes, for a provincial town the society was very respectable, and I spent a few quite happy days there.’ You rogue! People make fun of everything. They laugh at the idea that with one’s loved one even a hut would be paradise, and they say it’s not true. Of course it’s true. And not only a hut, but Krapivna, Stary Yurt, anywhere at all. With one’s loved one even a hut would be paradise, and that’s true, true, a hundred times true.

11 June    The Caucasus, Stary Yurt, the camp    Night time    I’ve already been here for about five days and I’m already in the grip of long-forgotten laziness. I’ve given up my diary completely. Nature, on which I pinned my hopes most of all when planning to come to the Caucasus, has not so far produced anything to attract me. And the high spirits which I thought would break out in me here haven’t shown themselves either.

The night is clear, and a fresh breeze is blowing through the tent and causing the light from the tapering candle to flicker. I can hear the distant barking of dogs in the village and the challenging of sentries. There is a smell of damp oak and plane wattling of which the hut is made. I am sitting on a drum in the hut which adjoins a tent on either side, the one covered in, where Knoring36 (an unpleasant officer) is sleeping, the other open and completely dark except for a patch of light falling on the end of my brother’s bed. In front of me is the brightly lit side of the hut on which a pistol, sabres, a dagger and some underpants are hanging. All is still. I can hear the wind soughing, an insect flying past and circling round the fire, and a soldier whimpering and sighing nearby.

I don’t feel like going to sleep; as for writing – there’s no ink. Till tomorrow. Then I’ll write some letters on the basis of the impressions of the day. Occupations for the 12th: From 5 to 8 – write. From 8 to 10 – bathe and sketch. From 10 to 12 – read. From 12 to 4 – rest. From 4 to 8 – translate from English.37 From 8 until night time – write. Continue to do gymnastics. Do my accounts book and the Franklin journal.

12 June    Got up late – Nikolenka woke me up coming back from hunting. I keep searching for a frame of mind, a view of things, a way of life which I can neither discover nor define. I would like more order in my mental activity, more activity itself, and at the same time more freedom and less restraint. I hardly slept at all last night. After writing my diary I began to pray to God. It’s impossible to express the sweetness of the feeling I experienced at prayer. I recited the prayers I usually do: Our Father, the Mother of God, the Trinity, the Doors of Mercy, an invocation to my guardian angel – and still I remained at prayer. If a prayer is defined as a petition or a thanksgiving, then I wasn’t praying. I longed for something exalted and good, but what exactly it was I cannot express, although I was clearly aware of what I longed for. I wanted to merge with the one all-embracing being. I asked it to forgive me my sins; but no, I didn’t ask for that, for I felt that if it had granted me this moment of bliss, it had already forgiven me. I asked, and at the same time felt I had nothing to ask for, and that I couldn’t and didn’t know how to ask. I gave thanks, yes, but not in words or thoughts. In my feeling alone I combined everything, both supplication and thanksgiving. The feeling of fear had completely disappeared. Not one of the feelings of faith, hope or charity could I single out from my general feeling. No – the feeling I experienced yesterday was the love of God. It is an exalted love which combines in itself all that is good, and rejects all that is bad.

How terrible it was for me to look at all the petty, vicious side of life. I was unable to conceive how it could have attracted me. With a pure heart I asked God to receive me into His bosom. I was not aware of the flesh; I was pure spirit. But no! The flesh, the petty side of life got on top again, and before an hour had passed I half-consciously heard the voice of vice, vanity and the empty side of life; I knew where this voice came from, I knew it would destroy my blissful state, I struggled against it and succumbed. I went to sleep dreaming of fame and women; but it’s not my fault, I couldn’t help it.

Everlasting bliss is impossible here. Suffering is necessary. Why? I don’t know. Yet how dare I say I don’t know? How did I dare think that the ways of Providence could be known? Providence is the source of reason, and reason tries to comprehend it … Mind gets lost in these depths of great wisdom, while feeling is afraid to offend it. I thank it for the moment of bliss which revealed to me my insignificance and my greatness. I want to pray, but I don’t know how; I want to comprehend, but I dare not – I surrender myself to Thy will! Why have I written all this? How commonplace, feeble and even meaningless is this expression of my feelings; and yet they were so exalted!!

I spent this morning quite well; I was a little lazy and told a lie, but an innocent one. Tomorrow I’ll write a letter to Zagoskina, at least in rough. I sketched half-heartedly. In the evening I admired the clouds. The clouds were wonderful as the sun was setting. The west was red, but the sun was still a few feet above the horizon. Massive crimson-grey clouds hovered over it. They seemed to be merging together uneasily. I spoke to someone and looked round again: along the horizon stretched a dark greyish-red streak, tailing off into an infinite variety of shapes, some converging on one another, others drifting apart with bright-red ends.

Man was created for solitude – solitude not in a literal, but in a moral sense. There are some feelings which ought not to be confided to anybody. Even if they are beautiful, exalted feelings, you sink in the estimation of the person you confide them to, or even allow the possibility of guessing at. When confiding them, a person is not fully aware of them, but is only expressing his aspirations. The unknown has the greatest power to attract. My brother and I are now living among the sort of people where it is impossible for us not to be aware of our joint superiority over the others; but we don’t say much to each other, as though afraid that it we did say something, we might enable people to guess at what we wanted to conceal from them all. We know each other too well.

Three things have struck me here. (1) The officers’ talk about bravery.38 When they start talking about whether a person is brave they say: ‘Yes indeed, everyone is brave.’ Ideas of this sort about bravery can be explained like this. Bravery is a state of mind in which the mental powers act in the same way with everyone whatever the circumstances might be. Or it is an intensification of activity which makes one lose the awareness of danger. Or there are two sorts of bravery: moral and physical. Moral bravery is the kind which stems from an awareness of duty, or generally speaking of moral inclinations, and not from an awareness of danger. Physical bravery is the kind which stems from physical necessity without making one lose the awareness of danger, as well as the kind which does make one lose that awareness. Examples of the former are men who voluntarily sacrifice their lives for the safety of their country or of another man. (2) An officer who is serving for gain. (3) The Russian soldiers in the Turkish campaign who threw themselves at the enemy simply in order to get a drink. This is merely an example of physical bravery on our side, that’s all that can be said.

13 June    I continue to be lazy, although I’m satisfied with myself, except for my sensuality. Several times when the officers have been talking about cards in my presence I’ve wanted to show them that I like playing. But I’ve always refrained. I hope that even if they invite me I shall refuse.

3 July    I wrote the above on 13 June, and I’ve wasted all the time since, because on the very same day I got carried away and lost 200 roubles of my own, 150 of Nikolenka’s and 500 I borrowed – a total of 850. Now I’m restraining myself and thinking what I’m doing. Rode over to Chervlennaya, got drunk and slept with a woman; it’s all very bad and troubles me a great deal. I still haven’t spent more than two months well – in such a way that I could be satisfied with myself. Wanted a woman again yesterday. Luckily she refused. How loathsome! But I’m writing it down to punish myself.

Took part in a raid.39 Acted badly again: acted without thinking and was afraid of Baryatinsky. However, I’m so weak, and so depraved, and so seldom do what is sensible, that I’m bound to succumb to the influence of every Baryatinsky … Tomorrow I’ll write my novel,40 do some translating and tell Knoring to wait and I’ll try and get some money. On Wednesday I’ll go to Groznoye.41 […]

I’ve just been lying down outside the camp. A marvellous night! The moon was just climbing up from behind a hillock and shedding light on two small, thin, low clouds; behind me a cricket was chirping its endless, melancholy song; in the distance I could hear a frog, and from near the village came the sound of Tatars shouting and a dog barking; then again all was still, and again I could hear nothing but the chirping of a cricket, and see a light transparent cloud drifting past near and distant stars.

I thought: I’ll go and describe what I can see. But how can I write it down? I’ll have to go and sit at an ink-stained table, take out some drab coloured paper and ink, get my fingers dirty and draw letters on the paper. Letters will make words, and words – sentences; but can one really convey feeling? Is it ever possible to transmit to another person one’s own views when contemplating nature? Description is not enough. Why is poetry so closely allied with prose, happiness with unhappiness? How ought one to live? Should one try to combine poetry and prose together, or enjoy the one and take to living at the mercy of the other?

A dream has a side which is better than reality; reality has a side which is better than a dream. Complete happiness would be a combination of the two.

4 July    I’m almost satisfied with myself, except for the fact that I’ve been somehow empty of late. I haven’t any thoughts; or if I have, they seem to me so worthless that I don’t want to write them down. I don’t know why this is. Either I’ve made progress critically, or I’ve fallen back creatively. Tomorrow I’ll go to the village and to Groznoye. I’ll talk to my brother about money and decide about a trip to Dagestan. I can write absolutely nothing, although there are characters here worth describing.

How worthlessly the days go by! Take today. Not a single recollection, not a single strong impression. I got up late, with that unpleasant feeling which always affects me on waking up: that I’ve behaved badly, that I’ve overslept. When I oversleep, I feel what a cowardly dog feels in the presence of its master when it has done wrong. Then I thought how fresh a man’s moral powers are on waking up, and wondered why I can’t always keep mine in that condition. I’ll always say that consciousness is the greatest moral evil that can befall a man. It’s painful, very painful to know in advance that in an hour’s time, although I shall be the same man with the same images in my mind, my outlook will have changed independently of myself, and at the same time I shall be conscious of it. I’ve been reading Horace.42  My brother was right when he said that this character is like me. Its main features are: nobleness of character, exalted ideas, love of fame – and complete lack of aptitude for any hard work. This lack of aptitude stems from lack of habit, and lack of habit from upbringing and vanity. […]

As usual, three of us dined together: my brother and I and Knoring. I’ll try and sketch Knoring’s portrait. It seems to me that it’s actually impossible to describe a man; but it’s possible to describe the effect he has on me. To say of a man that he’s original, kind, clever, stupid, consistent, etc. – these are words which give no idea about the man yet purport to depict him, whereas they often simply mislead one. I knew that my brother had lived with Knoring somewhere, had come to the Caucasus with him and was a good friend of his. I knew that he had kept an account of their joint expenses on the journey and was therefore a meticulous man; also that he owed money to my brother and was therefore a rather frivolous one. From the fact that he was friendly with my brother I concluded that he was not a society man, and from the fact that my brother said little about him I concluded that he was not noted for his intelligence. One morning my brother said to me: ‘Knoring will be coming today; how glad I’ll be to see him.’ ‘So now we’ll see this dandy,’ I thought. From behind the tent I heard my brother’s joyful cries of greeting, and a voice which responded to them just as joyfully: ‘Hello, you ugly old mug!’ Not a respectable person, I thought, or one with much understanding of things. No relationship can impart charm to such a mode of address. My brother, as was his wont, introduced me to him; but being already unfavourably disposed towards him, I bowed coldly and went on reading where I lay.

Knoring is a tall man, well-built, but devoid of charm. I can recognise expression in a person’s build as much as, if not more than, in his face: there are people who are attractively or, unattractively built. His face is broad, with prominent cheekbones, with a certain softness about it – what is called in horses a ‘fleshy head’. His eyes are hazel coloured and large, and have only two variations: laughter and a normal condition. When laughing, they remain fixed in an expression of obtuse inanity. The rest of his face is like a passport picture. He was subdued in my presence, I noticed. When the first moments of greeting were over and when the questions ‘Well, how are you?’ and the replies ‘As you see, I’m fine’, had been repeated several times, amid pauses, he turned to me and asked: ‘Are you here for long, Count?’ I again replied coldly. I have a way of immediately recognising people who like to have an influence over others – probably because I like to myself. He is one of those people. He has an outward influence on my brother. For example, he makes him come to see him. I would like to know whether it’s possible for a man consciously to try and acquire influence over other men. It seems as impossible to me as playing music à livre ouvert used to seem. However, I’ve tried it; and why shouldn’t people who are persistent succeed with practice? Such people have ulterior motives of this sort in everything they do. There is room for so many thoughts simultaneously, especially in an empty head.

10 August Starogladkovskaya    It was a wonderful night the day before yesterday, and I was sitting by the window of my hut in Starogladkovskaya and revelling in nature with all my senses except touch. The moon had not yet risen, but in the south-east the night clouds were already beginning to turn red and a light breeze was bearing with it a scent of freshness. Frogs and crickets merged together into one vague, monotonous night-time sound. The horizon was clear, and studded with stars. I love to gaze at night at the star-covered horizon; behind the big clear stars you can make out little ones merging into white patches. You look hard and admire them, and suddenly everything is hidden again – the stars seem to have come nearer. I like this optical illusion.

I don’t know how other people day-dream, but from what I’ve heard and read, not at all the way I do. People say that as you look at beautiful nature, thoughts arise of the greatness of God and the insignificance of man; lovers see the image of their beloved in the water. Other people say that the hills seemed to say this, and the leaves to say that, and the trees to beckon them somewhere. How can such thoughts arise? One must try to drive home the folly of it. The longer I live the more reconciled I become to various affectations in life, conversation, etc., but this affectation I can’t get used to, despite all my efforts. When I indulge in what is called day-dreaming, I can never discover a single sensible thought in my head; on the contrary, all the thoughts which roam around in my imagination are always the most trivial ones – the sort which cannot arrest the attention. But when I do light on a thought which leads on to a series of others, the pleasant state of moral indolence which constitutes my day-dreaming disappears, and then I begin to think.

I don’t know how recollections of nights of gipsy revelling have strayed into my roving imagination. Katya’s songs, eyes, smiles, breasts and tender words are still fresh in my memory, so why write them down? I want to tell a story about something quite different, after all. I notice that I have a bad habit of digressing, and that it’s actually this habit, and not an abundance of thoughts as I used to think, that often prevents me from writing, and makes me get up from my desk and think about something quite different from what I had been writing about. It’s a pernicious habit. In spite of my favourite writer Sterne’s enormous talent for story-telling and clever prattle, even his digressions are wearisome. Anyone who has had anything to do with gipsies can’t help acquiring the habit of singing gipsy songs, and whether he sings them well or badly they always give him pleasure, because they bring back vivid memories. One characteristic feature of a thing recreates for us many memories of occasions connected with that feature. With a gipsy song it’s difficult to define that feature: it lies in the pronunciation of the words, and in the embellishments (grace-notes) and stresses of a special kind.

I was singing one such song at my window – ‘Tell me why’ – not one of my favourite songs, but one which Katya had sung to me sitting on my knee on the very evening when she told me she loved me, and that she only showed favours to others because the gipsy choir required it of her, but that she allowed nobody except me those liberties which have to be hidden by the curtain of modesty. That evening I genuinely believed her artful gipsy chatter, and was in a good mood, as no guest disturbed me. And that’s why I love that evening and that song. I sang with great animation; no shyness restrained my voice or upset its modulations, and I listened to myself with great pleasure. Vanity, as always, wormed its way into my soul, and I thought: It’s very pleasant for me to listen to myself, but it must be even more pleasant for others to listen to me’; I even envied them their pleasure, which I couldn’t share, when suddenly, as I paused for breath and was listening to the sounds of night in order to sing the next couplet with even more feeling, I heard a rustling noise underneath my window. ‘Who’s that?’ ‘It’s me, sir,’ answered a voice which I didn’t recognise, despite its conviction that this answer was quite satisfactory. ‘Who’s “me”?’ I asked, vexed at the fact that my day-dreaming and singing had been disturbed by some outsider. ‘I was on my way home, sir, and I stopped and listened.’ ‘Ah, it’s Mark,43 is it?’ ‘Yes, sir. It seems your honour likes to sing Kalmyck songs.’ ‘What Kalmyck songs?’ ‘Yes,’ he went on, not noticing my annoyance and resentment, ‘I could hear their sort of roulades in your voice.’ ‘Yes, you are right.’ This lame Mark would have to go and spoil my pleasure with his stupid talk! It was all over now; I couldn’t go on either dreaming or singing. Then it occurred to me that I had been singing very badly, and that the laughter which I had heard in the next yard had been caused by my singing. This disagreeable impression brought me to my senses. I could neither work, nor did I feel like sleep; besides, Mark was obviously in a good frame of mind and had been the completely innocent instrument of my disenchantment. I expressed to him my astonishment that he wasn’t asleep yet, and he told me in very flowery and unintelligible words that he suffered from insomnia. We struck up a conversation. When he realised that I didn’t want to go to sleep he asked permission to come up to my room, to which I agreed, and Mark settled himself down with his crutches opposite my bed.

The personality of Mark, whose real name, however, is Luke, is so interesting, and such a typical Cossack personality, that it deserves attention. My landlord Yepishka,44 a veteran of Yermolov’s days, a Cossack, a rogue and a joker, called him Mark on the grounds that, as he says, there are three apostles: Luke, Mark and Nicholas the Martyr; and that one is as good as another, it doesn’t make any difference. And so he called Lukashka Mark, and the name Mark caught on throughout the village.

Mark is a man of about twenty-five, short of stature and a cripple; one of his legs is disproportionately small compared with his body, and the other leg is disproportionately small and crooked compared with the first; yet in spite of this, or rather because of it, he walks quite quickly, to avoid losing his balance – with crutches and even without them – resting one leg almost on the middle of the sole, and the other on the tip of the toe. When seated, you would say he was a man of medium height, and well built. It’s remarkable that his legs always reach the floor, however high the chair he is sitting on. This peculiarity of his posture always surprised me; at first I attributed it to his ability to stretch out his legs, but after studying it in detail, I discovered the cause to be the unusual flexibility of his spine, and the ability of his rear portion to assume all possible shapes. From in front it seemed that he wasn’t sitting on a chair, but only leaning against it and bending his body so as to throw his arm over the back of the chair (this was his favourite attitude); but on going round the back I discovered to my astonishment that he completely satisfied the requirements of the posture of a man sitting down.

His face is not handsome: a small head, closely cropped in Cossack style; quite a high, intelligent forehead, and beneath it a pair of mischievous grey eyes, not devoid of sparkle; a nose hooked downwards at the end; thick prominent lips and a chin covered by a reddish goatee beard – such are the individual features of his face. But the general impression of the face as a whole is one of cheerfulness, self-satisfaction, intelligence and timidity. I cannot describe him morally, but in so far as the following conversation reveals something of him, I will reproduce it. He and I had previously had some dealings and talks with each other. On that particular day, he came round to see me just as I was packing my things for the next day’s journey. Yepishka was sitting there with me, and he was afraid of Yepishka, quite rightly supposing he would be jealous of anything I should give to Mark; for I had chosen Mark to be my Kalmyck teacher.

‘Your honour, I have, if I can put it this way (he loved to use this parenthesis), a small request to make of you.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Allow me to tell you later – however, though,’ he said, thinking better of it and glancing at Yepishka with a smile, ‘if I had a pencil and paper I could do it in writing …’ I indicated all the necessary writing material on the table; he took a piece of paper, folded his legs and crutches into a shapeless heap, settled down on the floor, bent his head to one side, sucked hard at his pencil, smiled, and with a great effort traced out some scribbles on his knee. Five minutes later I received the following message, written of course, awry, and in a round hand, which he gave to me and then said, turning to Yepishka: ‘See, uncle, you sit there and don’t know what I’ve written.’ ‘Yes, you’re the scholar,’ the other answered with a sneer. ‘I venture to beg of your honour that if you will be so kind, that is about the travelling samovar, then I am prepared to be your servant in future, if the samovar is old and not needed for your requirements.’ The smile with which I said to him, ‘Very well, take it’, he probably took as approval of his literary talent, for he responded with the same self-satisfied and crafty smile which he had previously bestowed on Yepishka. That was all.

That night we struck up the following conversation.

‘You haven’t gone to bed yet may I ask?’ ‘No, I’m not sleepy. But where have you been?’ ‘I must admit I wasn’t sleepy either – I’ve been strolling round the village, dropped in here and there, and now I’m on my way home.’ I must observe that in inviting him in and starting a conversation with him I had a secret purpose – to find out whether he might be my Mercury and undertake the task which, although I knew he liked it very much, I couldn’t mention directly by name. A peculiar thing about me is that I cannot bring myself to mention by name or to approach directly the things which I do, not on the spur of the moment, but after careful consideration. And a peculiar thing about him is that his conversation is of two kinds: an ordinary kind which he uses on those occasions which have nothing special or particularly pleasant about them – in which circumstances he comports himself very simply and correctly: but if the conversation should touch on anything beyond the usual rut of his habits, he begins to talk, not so much in words, but in periods which are flowery and unintelligible; whereupon even his outward appearance alters completely: his eyes take on an unusual brilliance, an uncertain smile twists his lips, his whole body becomes mobile and he is no longer himself. Mark’s conversation and stories were very amusing, especially his intercession on behalf of K … L … who was ‘very attached’ to him, and who, having achieved his desired purpose, was unable owing to his weak health to take advantage of Mark’s efforts.

22 August    The 28th is my birthday, I shall be twenty-three; from that day I want to live in accordance with the purpose which I have set myself. I’ll think it all out carefully tomorrow, but just now I’ll take up my diary again, with a list of future occupations and a shortened Franklin table. I used to think that this was just pedantry, which did me harm; but that’s not where the fault lies, for no table can constrain the bold movements of the mind. If such a table can affect me, it can only be in a useful way, by strengthening my character and accustoming me to activity; and so I’ll continue my old system.

At sunrise, set about putting my papers, accounts, books and occupations in order; then put my thoughts in order and start copying out the first chapter of my novel. After dinner (don’t eat much), the Tatar language,45 sketching, shooting, exercise and reading.

25 August    Yesterday I had a Cossack girl at my place. I hardly slept all night. […]

26 August    […] Did nothing all day. Sado46 was in the way. Roamed around the village in the evening, eyeing the wenches. The drunken Yepishka told me yesterday that the Salamanida business is going well. I’d like to take her and clean her up. Meant to go hunting the next day, but hadn’t made arrangements the night before.

In the morning—write my novel, do some trick riding, study Tatar and go wenching.

4 September    My brother and Balta47 came to see me on the 27th. On the 28th I was twenty-three. I set much store by this age, but unfortunately I’m just the same; in a few days I’ve managed to do absolutely all the things I disapprove of. Abrupt changes are impossible. I’ve had women, and been proved weak on many occasions – in ordinary relations with people, in danger, and in card-play – and I’m still just as afflicted by false shame. Told a lot of lies. Went to Groznoye, God knows why, and didn’t call on Baryatinsky. Lost more than I had in my pocket, and when I got back, let a whole day go by without asking Alexeyev for money, as I meant to. I’ve been very lazy; I can’t collect my thoughts now, and I’m writing without wanting to write.

29 November, Tiflis48    I have never been in love with women. The only strong feeling like love which I did experience was when I was thirteen or fourteen, but I don’t want to believe that it was love because its object was a fat chambermaid (with a very pretty face, it’s true), and moreover the years from thirteen to fifteen are the most disorganised time for a boy (adolescence); you don’t know what to throw yourself into, and sensuality has an unusually strong effect at that period.

I have very often been in love with men; my first love was the two Pushkins,49  then the second – Saburov, then the third Zybin and Dyakov, the fourth Obolensky, Blosfeld, Islavin, then Gautier and many others. Of all these people I still love only Dyakov. For me the chief sign of love is the fear of offending or not pleasing the object of one’s love; simply fear. I fell in love with men before I had any idea of the possibility of pederasty; but even when I knew about it, the idea of the possibility of coitus never occurred to me. A strange case of inexplicable sympathy was Gautier. Although I had absolutely no relations with him except for buying books, I used to be thrown into a fever when he entered the room. My love for Islavin spoilt the whole eight months of my life in Petersburg for me. Although not consciously, I never bothered about anything else except how to please him. All the people I loved felt this, and I noticed how hard it was for them to look at me. Often, if I couldn’t find that moral understanding which reason required in the object of my love, or after some unpleasantness with him or her, I would feel hostility towards them; but this hostility was based on love. I never felt this sort of love for my brothers. I was very often jealous of women. I can understand ideal love – complete self-sacrifice to the object of one’s love. And that is what I experienced. I always loved the sort of people who were cool towards me, and only took me for what I was worth. The older I get, the more rarely I experience this feeling. If I do experience it now, it’s not so passionately, and it’s towards people who love me – i.e. the opposite of before. Beauty always had a lot of influence on my choice; however, there is the case of Dyakov; but I shall never forget the night when we were travelling from Pirogovo, and, wrapped up underneath a travelling rug, I wanted to kiss him and cry. There was sensuality in that feeling, but why it took that course it’s impossible to decide because, as I said, my imagination never painted any lubricious pictures; on the contrary, I have a terrible aversion to all that.

I observe in myself a tendency to squander which expressed itself in my youth in the destruction of everything that came to hand, it expresses itself now in the destruction of Vanyushka’s peace and quiet and the squandering of money without any cause or pleasure. For example. I often ask for a pipe at Vanyushka’s, not because I want to smoke, but because I like him to keep on the move, and I love to squander money. Today I caught my imagination at work; it was painting for itself a picture which showed that I had a lot of money, and that I was losing it gambling and squandering it, and this gave it great pleasure. I don’t like what can be acquired in exchange for money, but I do like having it and then not having it – the process of squandering. I’ll be careful in future; this tendency has already done me a lot of harm. […]

Painting affects the power to imagine nature, and its province is space. Music affects the power to imagine your feelings, and its province is harmony and time. Poetry affects the power to imagine both the one and the other, i.e. reality, or the relations of our feelings towards nature. Dances are a transitional stage between painting and music. Songs – between music and poetry. Why did the ancients call music imitative? Why not associate a feeling with each transitional stage? Why does music affect us like memory? Why do musical tastes differ according to age and education? Why painting is an imitation of nature is very clear (although it is not completely so); but why music is an imitation of our feelings, and what affinity there is between each change of sound and a particular feeling it’s impossible to say. Nature is subject to our five senses, but feelings like despair, love, rapture, etc. and their nuances are not only not subject to our five senses, but are not even subject to reason. Music even has the advantage over poetry that the imitation of feelings by music is more absolute than their imitation by poetry, but it does not have that clarity which constitutes the property of poetry.

Freedom consists in the absence of coercion to do evil; if freedom is understood in this way, it is understandable that it has this quality. There is no absolute freedom, but a greater or lesser degree of it is the result of a greater or lesser degree of power and temptation, in inverse proportion.

I admit of the power of fate only in so far as it has no relation to good and evil (internal). No situation a man is in can make him good or evil.

By the power of fate I mean – ‘what will be, cannot be avoided’ and ‘Thy will be done’.

All atoms have a spherical form and rotate round their axis. The law of gravity is a law of centrifugal and centripetal force. The sense of touch arises from the friction of rotating atoms. Touch would exist even if there was no pressure. The less pressure, the more acute the sense of touch.

22 December    I had a terrible dream about Mitenka.’50 On 21 December this year, at midnight, I had something like a revelation. The existence of the soul, its immortality (eternity), the duality of our existence and the essence of free will were revealed to me. Freedom is comparative: in relation to matter man is free, in relation to God he is not.

Today, 22 December    I was woken by a terrible dream – Mitenka’s corpse. It was one of those dreams which are never forgotten. Can it really mean anything? I cried a lot afterwards. Feelings are truer when asleep than when awake. False reasoning gives rise to poetic feeling.

Notes

1 Tolstoy’s eldest brother Nikolay, at the time on leave from the army in which he served for most of his adult life. He died of consumption in the south of France at the age of thirty-seven. (Letters, I, 12)

2 With foodstuffs and personal belongings from Yasnaya Polyana.

3 A card game similar to whist without trumps.

4 Countess Y. M. Tolstaya, a gipsy, and the widow of Tolstoy’s eccentric uncle Count F. I. Tolstoy, ‘the American’, portrayed by him in Two Hussars.

5 Prince S. D. Gorchakov, a colonel who had fought in the war of 1812, and another distant relative of Tolstoy’s.

6 Prince A. I. Gorchakov.

7 The first mention of Childhood. The last word is indecipherable in the manuscript, and the reading ‘day’ has been preferred to a possible alternative reading ‘childhood’.

8 Tolstoy’s name for the course of lectures on law which had been given at Kazan University and which he was studying with a view to taking his master’s examination as an external student.

9 K. A. Nevolin’s Encyclopaedia of Jurisprudence.

10 A Frenchman who owned a gymnasium in Moscow. Tolstoy took gymnastics and fencing lessons from him.

11 An idea borrowed from Benjamin Franklin.

12 A reference to his income and expenditure itemised in the previous day’s untranslated entry.

13 From Lamartine and other authors whom he was reading at the time. See entry for March–May, 1851, pp. 27–28.

14 Yergolskaya. Tolstoy wrote about her much later in his Memoirs.

15 The first reference to Tolstoy’s unfinished A History of Yesterday which he wrote in 1851.

16 The estate of Tolstoy’s brother Sergey, some twenty-five miles from Yasnaya Polyana where Tolstoy had recently returned from Moscow for the summer.

17 Nothing was written and nothing is known about the affair involving Gelke, an officer friend from Tula, who is mentioned several times in the diaries.

18 Tolstoy’s brother Sergey took a gipsy girl from Tula, Marya Shishkina, to live with him at Pirogovo and had eleven children by her. He eventually married her in 1867. (Letters, I, 4)

19 The word ‘conscience’ is surprising here. There is an error in the manuscript version of the sentence, and this may have affected the sense of the passage.

20 Tolstoy’s brother, brother-in-law and sister.

21 He decided to retire from his minor official post with the Tula provincial administration before leaving for the south of Russia.

22 A village which Tolstoy had received as part of his share of the family estates.

23 In April, 1851 Tolstoy left for the Caucasus with his brother Nikolay who was returning to his army unit. They stopped briefly in Moscow and Kazan, and in the second half of May travelled via Saratov and Astrakhan to the North Caucasus.

24 The village on the left bank of the Terek where Nikolay Tolstoy’s battery was stationed. It is described in The Cossacks under the name of Novomlinskaya stanitsa (stanitsa is a large Cossack village, cf. aul – a small mountain village). The name of the village is printed as Starogladovskaya in the Letters – both spellings occur.

25 A slip of the pen for 30 May.

26 Lieutenant-Colonel N. P. Alexeyev, commander of No. 4 battery, 20th artillery brigade, in which Tolstoy’s brother was serving as a regular officer and Tolstoy as a volunteer.

27 Captain Khilkovsky, second in command to Alexeyev and the prototype of Captain Khlopov in Tolstoy’s story The Raid.

28 This entry for March–May is written in a separate notebook which contains quotations from Lamartine’s novel Geneviève, his Histoire des Girondins, his poem Jocelyn and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie, together with Tolstoy’s reflections on what he had been reading.

29 In his Testament, Gogol writes of his ‘farewell tale’ which was ‘sung from his soul’ – presumably a reference to the second part of Dead Souls.

30 A story by D. V. Grigorovich which, Tolstoy claimed, made a very great impression on him. (Letters, II, 485)

31 A quotation from George Sand’s novel Horace.

32 Tolstoy took this remark of Seneca’s and the following somewhat inaccurate quotation from Sterne from a French edition of Mémoires de Sterne which he was reading at the time. Sterne wrote: ‘Conversation is a trapeze. If one embarks on it without a basis, the balance leans, and the thing comes to the ground.’

33 A Chechen fortified village not far from the military garrison town of Groznaya (or Groznoye) in the North East Caucasus.

34 Z. M. Molostvova, whom Tolstoy met while a student in Kazan and again on his way to the Caucasus in 1851. He refers to her in a letter of 1903 as one of his strongest childhood loves. (Letters, II, 634)

35 Prince M. S. Vorontsov, Governor-General of the Caucasus and Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Army.

36 F. G. Knoring, a platoon commander of No. 5 battery. For Tolstoy’s description of him see pp. 34.

37 Tolstoy was translating Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey.

38 This subject is taken up again in Chapter I of The Raid.

39 As a volunteer in an action against the mountain tribes under Prince Baryatinsky, who later succeeded Prince Vorontsov as Governor-General of the Caucasus and Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian Army. Tolstoy portrayed him as the general commanding the detachment in The Raid, and expressed his fears that Baryatinsky might recognise himself in the story.

40 Four Periods of Growth – the first version of the future trilogy Childhood, Boyhood and Youth.

41 More usually spelt Groznaya.

42 George Sand’s novel.

43 Luka Sekhin, a young Cossack from Starogladkovskaya, whom Tolstoy used to some extent as a model for Lukashka in The Cossacks.

44 Yepifan Sekhin, Luka’s uncle, and the prototype of Yeroshka in The Cossacks.

45 More exactly, Kalmyck.

46 Sado Miserbiyev, a Chechen serving in the Russian army. He is portrayed as the kunak of Hadji Murat in Tolstoy’s story of that name.

47 Balta Isayev, another Chechen friend of the Tolstoy brothers.

48 Tolstoy went to Tiflis with his brother on 1 November in order to join the regular army, and stayed until 12 January 1852.

49 The two Musin-Pushkin brothers, distant relatives of Tolstoy’s, who appear as the Ivin brothers in Childhood. Most of the other men mentioned in this paragraph were university friends of Tolstoy’s. Gautier inherited his father’s French bookshop in Moscow. Islavin was the son of the Tula landowner Islenyev who is portrayed in Childhood, Boyhood and Youth as the father of Nikolenka. For Dyakov see 1850, Note 10.

50 Tolstoy’s brother Dmitry, who died of consumption in 1856. Certain of his features were ascribed to Dmitry Nekhlyudov in Youth, and the death-bed scene of Nikolay Levin in Anna Karenina has many parallels with the death of Dmitry.

1852

2 January    When I sought happiness, I used to sink into vice; but when I understood that in this life it is enough simply not to be unhappy, I found fewer vicious temptations in my path – and I am now convinced that it’s possible to be virtuous and also not unhappy.

When I sought pleasure, it evaded me, and I would sink into a depressing state of boredom – a state from which one can pass into any other state, good or bad; but more likely the latter. Now that I only try to avoid boredom, I find pleasure in everything.

In order to be happy it is necessary to avoid unhappiness; in order to be cheerful it is necessary to avoid boredom.

Tout vient à point à celui qui sait attendre [Everything comes opportunely to him who knows how to wait].

Plato says that virtue comprises three qualities: justice, moderation and bravery.1  Justice, it seems to me, is moral moderation. To follow the rule – nothing to excess – will in the physical world be moderation; in the moral world – justice. Plato’s third quality is only the means of conforming to the rule – nothing to excess – Strength.

For all young people there is a time when they have no firm ideas about things – no rules – and are drawing them up, both the one and the other. At this time they usually shun practical interests and live in a moral world. This transitional period I call youth. For some people youth lasts longer than for others. There are even people who always remain young, and others who have never been young. What does the length of this period depend on? It would seem that since, as I said, young people at this time are busy trying to draw up firm ideas about things, and rules, then the cleverer the young person is, the quicker this period ought to pass: he will draw up rules for himself and live by them. But in reality it is just the opposite. The practical side of life demands our attention more and more the further we progress through it; but the more inclination a man has towards reflection (and so finds moral pleasure in it), the more he tries to put this transitional period of time behind him; but in order to draw up correct ideas about things and correct rules for life, a whole lifetime of reflection is not enough; although he advances along this path, necessity requires him to stop drawing up rules and to act according to whatever ones have already been drawn up. And so when we start out on our practical life, we all begin to act on the basis of those imperfect and incomplete rules and ideas which necessity has found us with.

The length this period lasts is proof of intelligence, but does not make for success in practical life. It’s easier to act on the basis of simple, uncomplicated rules which, while they may be incorrect, are nevertheless mutually compatible, and which one has accepted without careful examination, than on the basis of rules which may be correct but which have been insufficiently clarified and unified. For this reason fools are more successful in the world than clever people.

Two observations for the writer of belles-lettres. If a shadow is lying on the water it is very seldom possible to see it, and when you do see it, it doesn’t strike you at all.

Every writer has in mind for his own work a special category of ideal reader. It is necessary to define clearly to oneself the demands of these ideal readers, and if there are indeed even two such readers in the whole world – to write for them only. When describing characters or landscapes which are unusual for the majority of readers, one should never lose sight of the characters and landscapes which are usual – one should take them as the basis, and describe the unusual ones by comparison with them.

5 February    (Nikolayevka2 – I’m travelling with the detachment). I am indifferent to life, in which I’ve experienced too little happiness to love it; and so I’m not afraid of death. I’m not afraid of sufferings either, but I am afraid of being unable to endure sufferings and death well. I am not completely at ease, and I notice this because I keep passing from one state of mind and one view of many situations to another. It’s strange that the view of war I had as a child – bravado – is the most comforting one for me. I am going back a lot to a child’s view of things.

28 February    With the detachment (near Teplikichu).3 I have never in real life justified the expectations made for me by my imagination.

I wanted fate to place me in difficult situations for which strength of mind and virtue were needed. My imagination loved to present these situations to me, and an inner feeling told me I should have enough strength and virtue for them. My self-love and confidence in my strength of mind have grown through not meeting rebuttals. Occasions when I might have justified my confidence but didn’t, I excused on the grounds that the difficulties facing me were too few and that I hadn’t used all my strength of mind.

I was proud, but my pride rested not on actual deeds, but on the firm hope that I would be capable of anything. Because of this my outward pride lacked assurance, firmness and constancy, and I would pass from extreme arrogance to excessive modesty.

My condition in time of danger opened my eyes. I liked to imagine myself completely cool and calm in danger. But I wasn’t so in the actions of the 17th and 18th.4 I haven’t the excuse which I normally used that the danger wasn’t as great as I had imagined. It was a unique opportunity for displaying all my strength of mind. Yet I was weak and therefore dissatisfied with myself.

I have only now come to understand that confidence in one’s future actions is deceptive, and that one can only rely on oneself in the case of something one has already experienced; that such confidence destroys that very strength of mind, and that no occasion should be considered too insignificant to apply the whole of one’s strength to it.

In a word, never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

However simple this rule is and however often I have heard it, I have only now come to understand and recognise the truth of it.

There is only one way I know in which thoughts can turn into beliefs.

20 March, Starogladkovskaya    I have just re-read my old diary from July 1851 and something else written in that book. The pleasure I got from reading it makes me continue the diary in order to pave the way for the same sort of pleasure for myself in future. Some thoughts written in that book struck me by their originality, others by their correctness. It seems to me that I have now lost the ability to write and think so readily and boldly. Such boldness, it’s true, was often combined with paradoxicality; but on the other hand there was more assurance about it.*

I must confess that one of the main aspirations of my life – to be certain about a thing – is steadfast and unwavering. Can it be that doubts also grow as one grows older? I discovered many pleasant memories in my diary – pleasant simply because they are memories. The whole time that I was keeping the diary I was a very bad person, the direction I was taking was quite false; because of that there isn’t a single moment from all that period which I would like to have back exactly as it was; and all the changes which I would like to make, I would like to make in myself.

My best memories concern dear Volkonskaya.5

Throughout my diary one main idea and desire can be seen – to be rid of the vanity which was oppressing me and ruining all my pleasures, and to search for ways to rid myself of it.

It is nearly seven months since I stopped writing my diary.6 September I spent at Starogladkovskaya, and in visits to Groznoye and Stary Yurt; I went hunting, ran after Cossack women, drank, wrote a little and did some translating. In October I went to Tiflis with my brother to look for a post in the service. I spent a month in Tiflis, uncertain what to do, and with foolish and vain plans in my head. From November onwards I was having treatment, and spent two whole months, until the New Year, at home: although it was dull, I spent the time quietly and usefully – I wrote the whole of the first part.7

January I spent partly travelling and partly at Starogladkovskaya, did some writing, polished up the first part, made preparations for the expedition and felt well and at ease. February I spent on the expedition – and was satisfied with myself. At the beginning of March I prepared for communion; now I’m bored and idle. When I set off for the expedition I prepared myself for death to such an extent that I not only gave up, but quite forgot my previous occupations, so that it’s now more difficult than ever to get down to them again.

Although I have thought very little about myself all this time, the idea that I have become far better than I used to be has somehow wormed its way into my mind – and even become a conviction. Have I really become better? Or is it only the same arrogant confidence in my reformation which I always had when I used to plan in advance my future way of life?

So far as I have been able to get to know myself, it seems to me that three evil passions predominate in me: gambling, sensuality and vanity. I have long been convinced that virtue, even in the highest degree, is the absence of evil passions; and so if I have really eliminated to any extent my predominating passions, I can confidently say that I have become better.

I’ll examine each of these three passions. The passion for gambling stems from a passion for money, yet most people (especially those who lose more than they win), having once begun to gamble from having nothing to do, or from imitating others or from a desire to win, have no passion for the winnings, but acquire a new passion for gambling itself – for the sensations. Consequently, the source of this passion is habit alone: and the way to eliminate the passion is to eliminate the habit. This is what I have done. The last time I gambled was at the end of August – consequently more than six months ago – and now I don’t feel any impulse to gamble at all. At a gambling party in Tiflis I started playing with a marker and lost something like a thousand games; at that moment I might have lost everything. Consequently, having once acquired the habit, it might easily be revived; and so although I feel no wish to gamble, I must always avoid any opportunity to do so, which I am doing without feeling any deprivation.

Sensuality has a completely antithetical basis: the more you refrain, the stronger the desire. There are two causes of this passion: the body and the imagination. It is easy to withstand the body, but very difficult to withstand the imagination which affects the body. The remedies against both causes are hard work and occupations, both physical – gymnastics – and moral – literary composition. But no. Since this inclination is a natural one and one which I find it a bad thing to satisfy only because of the unnatural position I am in (a bachelor of twenty-three), nothing will help to rescue me from temptation except strength of will and prayer to God. I had a woman at the end of September, and again in Tiflis four months ago.

Vanity is an unintelligible passion, one of those evils like epidemics – famine, locusts or war – with which providence punishes human beings. The source of this passion can’t be discovered, but the causes which foster it are inactivity, luxury and the absence of cares and privations.

It’s a sort of moral sickness like leprosy – it doesn’t destroy any one part but disfigures the whole – it insinuates itself gradually and imperceptibly and then develops throughout the whole organism; there is no manifestation of life which it doesn’t infect; it’s like venereal disease – if it’s driven out of one part it appears with greater force in another. The vain man knows neither true joy, nor grief, nor love, nor fear, nor despair, nor hatred – everything about him is unnatural and forced. Vanity is a sort of immature love of fame, a sort of self-love transferred to the opinions of others – a vain man loves himself not as he is, but as he appears to others to be. This passion is developed to excess in our age; people laugh at it, but they don’t condemn it because it does no harm to others. But on the other hand, for the man possesed by it it is worse than all other passions – it poisons his whole existence: An exceptional feature of this passion, common to leprosy too, is its extreme contagiousness. It seems to me, however, that while discussing this, I have discovered the source of this passion – love of fame.

I have suffered a lot from this passion – it has spoilt the best years of my life and deprived me for ever of all the freshness, boldness, cheerfulness and enterprise of youth.

I don’t know how, but I have suppressed it, and even gone to the opposite extreme: I am on my guard against any manifestation of it, and think carefully in advance for fear of relapsing into my old failing. I don’t know whether, through chance or providence, this passion has been so seldom satisfied that I have experienced only the sufferings which it affords; or whether it was the influence of my brother who hardly understands at all what vanity means, or whether it was my remoteness from vain circles and a way of life which made me look at my situation from a serious point of view – but I completely eliminated this passion during my illness in Tiflis. I can’t say that the passion has been completely eliminated, because I often miss the delights it used to afford me; but at least I can understand life without it and have acquired the habit of keeping it at a distance. I have only recently experienced, for the first time since childhood, the pure delights of prayer and love. It is obvious already from my diary of last winter that I wanted to extirpate this passion; but I only attacked those manifestations which were disagreeable to me, not understanding that it was necessary to uproot the passion entirely in order to be rid of it. It seems to me that I have done this now; but I still have leanings towards it, and so I must be on guard against a new infection.

20 March    Got up after 8. Severe toothache before daybreak. Partly through laziness, partly through illness didn’t attend drill. Read my old diary and wrote the new one till dinner. Alexeyev is still as dull as ever – the same endless stories about things which can’t interest anyone; the same inability to listen, and a timid, uncertain gaze. Probably my own gaze affects him, and for that reason I’m somehow ashamed to look at him. (Cadet Makhin.)8 After dinner I did some writing; Durda9 came and interrupted me, but I was ashamed to drive him away because I had entertained him well on previous occasions. He must be a cunning rogue; he told me about a skirmish between Hadji Murat and Arslan Khan over a mosque.10 It would have been interesting to see them. Durda for some reason has become very genial and has a good opinion of the Russians; but last year he used to tell me with pride how he had fought the Cossacks.

It’s strange that not one of the masses of Chechens who hang around the Russians showed us the roads which Bota11 did; and they are all very mercenary-minded. When I asked Durda about this he said that Bota must have been very angry. Why did I tell Durda that I had seen how Bota had been frightened by a hand-grenade when I hadn’t seen it? After Durda had gone I went to Yanovich’s;12 but now I had other intentions. Ever since I met Pomchishka (probably not accidentally on her part), she often crosses my mind, and it’s become difficult for me to control myself. There was a cadet at Yanovich’s, but I took such a dislike to him when I caught sight of him that I didn’t go into the room. When I left with Yanovich, I laughed at something, and wanted to go back to the playground again,13 as Nikolenka puts it. God grant this frame of mind may recur more often. It’s a long time since I’ve been as cheerful as today, and that’s because I’ve been working. How many advantages there seem to be in work, while in idleness there is neither benefit nor pleasure; and yet it usually gets the upper hand.

I like Yanovich so much for his good-natured and frank modesty that in a few days I’ve grown as used to him as to an old friend. I had a hurried, careless game of chess with him, and did some gymnastics with Sulimovsky present as well. Then, I don’t know why, I called Dmitry in and made fun of him. It was stupid. I played a few more games of chess just as badly, then Yanovich went to supper while I sat down to write letters to Valeryan and Andrey.14 I had drafted these letters on receiving one from Andrey; I was angry at that time and they seemed very good to me; but now, on the contrary, I was in a good frame of mind and the combination of these two moods has resulted in letters which I don’t like. Vexation, and expressions which are completely feminine. Read Thiers and am going to bed at 11.30.

Tomorrow I’ll get up earlier and try to spend the day as fully as possible. Damned laziness! What a wonderful person I would be if that didn’t impede me. I worry about by brother, and miss him – nasty thoughts on that score keep coming into my head.

21 March    I got up before 8 and read a chapter of Thiers while having tea; then I went for a walk with Dmitry and the dogs. That was rather stupid of me, because it would have been better to have gone to drill, and better still not to have gone out at all because I had toothache again. Didn’t catch anything, came back home and translated till dinner; over dinner I had quite a good talk with Khilkovsky about the fires. A wonderful old man! Simple (in the good sense of the word) and brave. I’m sure about these two qualities, and besides, his appearance doesn’t exclude all other good qualities, as Sulimovsky’s does. Alexeyev was delighted with the hay, and his gaze was steady. I’m completely convinced that vanity stems from physical and moral inactivity. After dinner I copied out the first part,16 and worked without any constraint. God grant it may always be so. Sultanov17 arrived, delighted to have got some dogs. A remarkable and original personality. If it were not for his passion for dogs he would be an out-and-out scoundrel. This passion best accords with his nature.

My brother arrived, and I told him how unpleasant it was to write an untruth in a written answer required of me,18 in the hope that he would completely reassure me on that score, and say it didn’t matter at all; but on the contrary, he thought I had done wrong. It’s strange how he, with his chivalrous code of honour to which he is always faithful, can get on with, and even enjoy himself with the officers here. Why am I somehow ill at ease with him since I came back from Tiflis? Is it because we were too fond of each other, idealised each other while apart, and expected too much of each other?

The order of occupations which I have adopted, i.e. – translation in the morning, correcting after dinner and the story in the evening – is a very good one. The only thing is I don’t know when to do gymnastics, and that’s absolutely necessary – some exercise every day. It’s after 10; now, I’ll have supper and go straight to bed.

When you are employed, time goes so quickly that you would like to stop it. When idle, it goes so slowly that you would like to goad it on. Which is more pleasant? It’s difficult to decide. I only know that in my recollection one busy day equals three idle ones. By this calculation, time ought to pass more quickly on idle days, but the reverse is true.

22 March    Got up after 9 because I had toothache in the night – so badly that I groaned and cried out in my sleep. Drank two glasses of coffee to counteract the camphor which I’d swallowed a lot of because of the toothache, and sweated the whole morning after it. My brother and Yanovich came round; they disturbed me a bit, but I went on translating. Dined at home; after dinner I was rather idle; I worked, but not as hard as yesterday. I’m convinced that the camphor hasn’t destroyed my procreative powers. I haven’t done as much correcting as yesterday, nor as carefully; and this is mainly so as not to get bored with the work. Lost two games of chess to Yanovich – without the queen; that shows how modest he is. Didn’t go on with the story, partly because I didn’t have time, but partly because I’m seriously beginning to doubt the merits of the first part. It seems to me too detailed, long-winded and lifeless. I’ll think about it.

Sensuality is beginning to flare up very much – I must be careful. I’ve had almost no exercise; it’s impossible to go out because of the wind, and it’s dull at home.

It’s now 11.30, I’m going to bed – I’m satisfied with my day.

23 March    Got up at 7, the weather was marvellous; went out hunting, rode up and down the undulating country till one. Killed two ducks. Late for dinner and ate at home. Khilkovsky and Yanovich came after dinner – did gymnastics. I like Khilkovsky very much, but somehow he has a disagreeable effect on me; it’s embarrassing for me to look at him, just as it used to be embarrassing to look at people I was in love with. I’ve received my enlistment papers. I did my gymnastics rather badly. Khilkovsky put me to shame, mainly because I was in too much of a hurry. After gymnastics I played two games of chess, had a wonderful blissful sleep till after 9, and went out to supper. Alexeyev wasn’t there – he’d gone to Kizlyar, and so it wasn’t dull at supper. After supper I went with my brother and Yanovich to Khilkovsky’s and from there home. Nikolenka for some reason was very cheerful; and I confess it was disagreeable to see his cheerfulness because there is something absurd and unattractive about him when he’s cheerful. […]

24 March    […] A prayer: ‘Father, Mother of God, remember my relatives, living and dead;’ then: ‘Save me, O Lord, from vanity, indecision, idleness, sensuality, illness and mental disquiet; Grant me, O Lord, that I may live without sin and suffering and die without fear and despair – with faith, hope and love I surrender myself to Thy will.’

‘Mother of God and Guardian Angel, pray to the Lord for me.’

27 March, morning    […] Read Notes of the Fatherland for February. Country Lanes19 is very good, but a pity it’s an imitation. I’ll do some correcting today, and perhaps some writing.

27 March, 12 o’clock at night    Although not quite well, I did corrections until 11 o’clock – not altogether carefully or neatly; had dinner, read a bit and went on with the same work; my brother came and I read to him what I’d written in Tiflis.20 He thought it wasn’t as good as my earlier writing, and I thought it was no good at all. I wanted to lighten my labours, but the copyists can’t copy, and consequently I’ll have to work on my own.

Apropos of an article by A. Dumas on music,21 I remembered what enormous pleasure I’m deprived of here. Almost all my dreams of happiness have been destroyed in my imagination by reality, except for the happiness of the artist. I experienced this in the country in 1850,22 although in a very imperfect form.

Tomorrow I’ll do some copying, write a letter to Seryozha and think over the second day:23 can I revise it or must I abandon it altogether?

I must ruthlessly eliminate all passages which are unclear, long-winded or out of place – in a word, unsatisfactory – although they may be good in themselves.

Persistence and resolution – these are the two qualities which guarantee success in any matter. I’m going to bed, it’s 12.30. […]

29 March    […] For some time remorse at the loss of the best years of my life has begun to torment me very much. And it has done so ever since I began to feel that I could do something good. It would be interesting to describe the course of my moral development, but not only words, but even thoughts would be inadequate for that.

Great thoughts have no frontiers, but writers long ago reached the impassable frontier of their expression. Played draughts, had supper and am going to bed. I’m tormented by the pettinesss of my life – I feel that it’s because I’m petty myself – but I still have the strength to despise both myself and my life. There’s something in me that makes me believe that I wasn’t born to be the same as other people. But where does this come from? Is there some discord or lack of harmony in my abilities, or am I really superior to ordinary people in some respect? I am old – the time for development has passed, or is passing; but I’m still tormented by thirst … not for fame – I don’t want fame and I despise it – but to have a big influence on people’s happiness and usefulness.

Shall I simply die with this hopeless wish? There are thoughts which I don’t voice even to myself; but I value them so much that without them there would be nothing left for me. I wrote the story with enthusiasm; but now I despise the very labour, and myself, and those who will read the story; and if I don’t abandon this labour, it’s only in the hope of dispelling boredom, acquiring the habit of work and giving pleasure to Tatyana Alexandrovna. If there is a touch of vanity of thought here, it is so innocent that I excuse it in myself, and it confers the advantage of activity.

I have always been afraid of vanity and despise it so much that I don’t hope that its satisfaction will afford me any pleasure. But I must hope for this, because otherwise what will be left – what will be my motive force? Love and friendship! Even these two feelings I involuntarily take to be the infatuation and illusion of my youthful imagination. Have they brought me happiness? Or perhaps I have just been unfortunate? This hope alone supports my desire to live and to endeavour. If happiness and useful activity are possible and I experience them, at least I shall be in a position to take advantage of them. Lord have mercy on me.

30 March, Easter Day    Slept well and got up late, at 10 o’clock. I am sometimes stupid enough to eat a lot of hot things with the purpose of testing whether my reproductive powers have been destroyed or not; I did this yesterday and so I had diarrhoea and was upset all day. I must try to arouse sensuality as little as possible. […]

Went coursing hares, and only saw one – did gymnastics, drank tea and went round to my brother’s, having learned from Buyemsky24 that everyone there was indecently drunk. The news was correct. I found them dragging some old man into the hut. Ladyzhensky25 drunk is just as stupid and absurd as he is sober. My little boy26 is young and nice – he presses my hands and is ready to pour out his heart. His experience of drunkenness hasn’t yet taught him to avoid effeminacy, which is just as intolerable in a drunken man as in a sober one. Drunkenness hasn’t become a routine with him yet. Nikolenka can hardly speak and looks at me with eyes which say: ‘I agree with you that it’s vile and that I’m a sorry sight, but I like it.’ Drunk, he is very like Arsenyev is when drunk. Yermolov’s prediction about him27  is unfortunately coming true. Yermolov forgot to say: ‘Or else go mad’. I think that I’ll go out of my mind with boredom. I despise all passions and despise life, and yet get carried away by petty little passions and distracted by life. I can’t explain this otherwise than by my habit of being carried away and going on living. Foolish habits! […]

31 March    Woke at 6 o’clock and roused everyone; but was too lazy to get up and slept on till 9. […] Arrived at Alexeyev’s when everyone was already at table, and my brother was in a pathetic state. I found it so unpleasant to look at him that I left straight after dinner and started writing. Put the finishing touches to one chapter. Nikolenka arrived in the same condition. I went out hunting and learned later from Balta that he had caused a scandal in the square. A pity he doesn’t know how much it grieves me to see him drunk; I’m sure that since it affords him very little pleasure, he would refrain from it. The most unpleasant thing of all for me is the fact that he is judged and pitied by people who are not worth his little finger; but they are entitled to pity him. After hunting I chatted with Balta till supper. He told me the dramatic and absorbing story of the Dzhemi family.28 There’s a subject for a Caucasian tale. […]

1 April    Woke up before 8 again, but went back to sleep and slept till 10. Read The Contemporary; all very bad. It’s strange that bad books indicate my failings to me more than good books. Good ones make me lose hope. Wrote a chapter on prayer, slow going. […] Wrote and wrote, and finally began to notice that my discourse on prayer has pretensions to logicality and profundity of thought; but it isn’t consistent. Decided to finish it somehow or other before getting up and immediately burnt half of it – I won’t include it in the story, but I’ll keep it as a souvenir. My brother has a story about some wench he knocked down yesterday in the square. It’s stupid! Things appear in a false light to people who look at them with the aim of writing them down; I’ve experienced this myself. […]

4 April    […] Dined at home; read and slept for two hours; then read again and set off for a walk round the village with evil intentions. My energy flags and my passions get stronger. I haven’t any constant energy; but it rises and slumps almost periodically. What causes my energy to rise and fall? The nature of my pursuits, or the people I see, or physical causes? I don’t know; but it’s interesting and would be useful to know. […] Met Baumgarten and Verzhbitsky at supper. I wasn’t very shy, but went to the opposite extreme – I talked a lot. It’s silly that the presence of the most insignificant man makes me change; the main thing is to notice this change in me and to try to prevent it. […]

5April    […] O shame! I went and knocked at Kasatka’s window. Fortunately for me she didn’t let me in. Got a letter and 100 roubles from Tatyana Alexandrovna. I can only redeem this escapade by intensive work and energy. […]

7 April. 11 o’clock at night    Although I woke up before 7 I couldn’t overcome laziness and only got up at 9. Read over and made final corrections to the first day.29 I’m absolutely convinced that it’s no good at all. The style is too careless and there are too few ideas to make it possible to forgive the emptiness of content. However, I’ve decided to finish correcting the whole of the first part and tomorrow I’ll start on the second day. Shall I send off this work or not? I haven’t decided. Nikolenka’s opinion will decide the matter. I’m very worried about him, and my heart is somehow heavy and apprehensive. I very much want to begin a short Caucasian story,30 but I won’t allow myself to do so until I’ve finished the work already begun.

Dined at home. Read some splendid articles by Buffon31 on domestic animals. His extraordinary detail and fullness of exposition are not at all ponderous. At 6 o’clock I went riding and foolishly lost my temper with the dogs. Read The Old House?32 about visits to the Aleutian Islands. Quite interesting, although badly written.

8 April    […] Translated a chapter of Sterne in the morning. […]

10 April    Got up before 8. Idled about a bit – attended drill; then got down to the novel, but stopped after writing two pages because it occurred to me that the second day can’t be good if it lacks interest, and that the whole novel is like a drama. I’m not sorry; tomorrow I’ll cut out all that’s superfluous. […]

II April    Got up before 8, read some stupid stories in the Reader’s Library, dined at home, read again, walked round to Nikolenka’s, attended drill and couldn’t help smiling as I looked at the self-satisfied figure of Alexeyev. Nikolenka came; I did some more reading. Went to knock at Kasatka’s, but fortunately for me a passer-by interrupted me. I’m not well – haemorrhoids and varicose veins – probably the result of abstinence. […]

12 April    […] I think Nikolenka seems sorry for me and regrets that he inveigled me into the service. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad, but we are very secretive with each other. I’m getting the bad habit of thrusting myself on people to read my story to them. […]

14 April, Kizlyar33    Got up at 7, went hunting, caught nothing, reached Kizlyar at 12. Read, drank tea and dozed off. The doctor woke me. As far as I can see he’s an ignoramus who tries to show off his knowledge and so is rash and dangerous. I’ll stay till Sunday, and if I’m no better I’ll treat myself at Starogladkovskaya according to the prescriptions. Tomorrow I’ll send Dmitry away. Bought some raisins and made my teeth sore. Was very ashamed of myself for it. Read Sterne. Wonderful. ‘If nature has so woven her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece – must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?’34

I feel a bit easier about my illness. Read Histoire d’Angleterre35 and not without pleasure. I’m beginning to love history and to understand its usefulness. And this at twenty-four! That’s what a bad education means. I’m afraid it won’t last long. Am going to bed at 9. […]

16 April    Got up at 9. Read The Wandering Jew,36 Yermak37 and a legend about Peter the Great. There’s a certain peculiar pleasure in reading stupid books; but an apathetic pleasure. […]

17 April    Got up late. Read various stupid things before dinner and after dinner till 2 o’clock. Wrote a new chapter – ‘The Ivins’38 – but it turned out badly. […]

19 April    […] A man who always speaks the truth can’t be a chatterbox.

When you get a letter from a person you love, you want to know not so much what has happened to him as how he regards what has happened. […]

21 April Oreshinka39    […] Killed a hare; I think I’m beginning to like shooting. Wrote a bit, but what I wrote seems poor. I don’t know whether going out was good for my health, but it was very good for my pleasure. I spent the whole day in the open air and on the move. Spring and time are passing, but my illnesses will never pass. If I had money, I would buy an estate here, and I’m sure that I would be able to manage it profitably – not as in Russia. […]

22 April, Shandrakovskaya Harbour.40    Got up very early, and if I didn’t catch anything I enjoyed the delightful morning. My dogs sometimes race and sometimes don’t, and so I don’t know what to decide about them. In Bolshaya Oreshevka I talked to an intelligent peasant. They are satisfied with their existence but not with Armenian sovereignty. After dinner and a rest I went shooting and thought about serfdom. I’ll think carefully at leisure whether I can make a pamphlet out of my thoughts on the subject.41 […]

9 May    […] During my illness a moral change took place in me, such that I absolutely despise myself. And if I could live till the end of my life without any great sufferings or doubts, and as an honest man, I would wish for nothing more.

10 May    […] I want to stop reading. Aquiline noses42 are driving me mad; all a person’s strength of character and happiness in life seem to lie in them. I’m also tormented by the thought that I’ve completely lost my cheerful spirits, and, I think, for ever. I’m bored with everyone, and everyone, even Nikolenka, is bored with me. Tomorrow I’ll start work on the continuation of Childhood and perhaps on a new novel.43 […]

11 May    Got up early, but can’t get out of the habit of reading. Wrote a little, without any self-love and with great ease. It occurred to me that in the direction my writing has taken this year I’ve been very like certain people (especially young ladies), who try to see in everything a certain special subtlety and complexity. […]

16 May, Pyatigorsk    […] The music in Pyatigorsk, the people promenading and all those things which used to seem so foolishly attractive have made no impression on me. Only one thing disturbed me. The cadets, their dress and the ridiculous saluting for half an hour. I mustn’t forget that the main purpose of my coming here is to be cured; and so tomorrow I’ll send for the doctor and take a flat on my own in the suburbs. Going to bed at 9.15. I’ve been intemperate these last two days: drank wine and beer and even wanted …

18 May    Got up early, got on with Childhood; it’s become extremely repulsive, but I’ll continue with it. The doctor came; I’ll start the baths on Tuesday. Walked to the Alexandrovskaya Gallery and did some shopping; had dinner and after dinner had an exceptionally refreshing and pleasant sleep for 2½ hours. Drank the waters. Saluting is unpleasant because there are occasions when it’s absurd. Wrote A Letter from the Caucasus44 – tolerably, I think, but not well. I’ll continue (1) studying, (2) my working habits, (3) perfecting my style. […]

22 May    Got up at 4.15, drank the waters, took a bath; my head ached and I felt very weak. Didn’t write anything, but chatted with Buyemsky about mathematics and told him about Plato’s Symposium, which he had forgotten. I’d very much like to do mathematics again, only I don’t know whether I’m capable of it now. Buyemsky has become less caustic and is beginning to listen. Had dinner, slept, drank the waters, and copied out the Letter, the second part of which will need thinking about. Re-read the chapter ‘Sorrow’45 and wept with all my heart. There really are some fine passages in it, but there are bad ones as well. I’m becoming extremely careless about everything. I must put pressure on myself. I’m going to bed, it’s 11 o’clock.

23 May    […] Childhood seems to me not altogether bad. If I had enough patience to copy it out a fourth time, it would even be good. […]

25 May    Got up before 4, woke up myself, feel fine, the same routine, didn’t write much because of pondering over a mystical, rather stupid phrase which I wanted to express eloquently. Wasted the whole morning over it and am still not satisfied. Visited Protasov. Why are all people – not only those whom I don’t like or respect and who are of a different bent from me, but all people without exception – noticeably ill at ease with me? I must be a difficult, unbearable person. […]

27 May    Got up at 4.30. Usual routine, finished Childhood in the morning and couldn’t do anything all day. The beginning which I’m re-reading is very bad, but nevertheless I’ll have it copied and send it off at once. […]

29 May    Got up before 5. Usual routine, health not good, throat sore. Wrote nothing. Trying to get a piano. Dreamed the whole morning about the conquest of the Caucasus. Although I know that it’s bad for my normal pursuits to be carried away like this, I can’t get out of the habit. We only value time when there’s little of it left. And the main thing is, the less that lies ahead of us the more we count on it. […]

30 May    Usual routine; wrote a letter to Tatyana Alexandrovna46 which I didn’t send and which I’m dissatisfied with. I’m doing nothing and thinking about the landlady. Have I the talent to compare with our modern Russian writers? Decidedly not. Sitting down to supper at 10.30.

31 May    Got up early, drank the waters, had a bath, drank tea and did nothing before dinner. Didn’t sleep, but wrote about courage.47 The ideas are good, but because of laziness and bad habits the style is unpolished. Drank the waters and was in a cheerful frame of mind. The copyist came and I handed over and read aloud the first chapter. It’s definitely no good at all. Tomorrow I’ll revise the second chapter; I’ll revise it as I copy it out.48 In the morning I had a strong erection, and when I came home alone I found my young landlady in the kitchen and said a few words to her. She’s definitely flirting with me: she ties bunches of flowers underneath the window, waits for the bees to swarm, and sings songs, and all these endearments are destroying my peace of heart. Thank God for the bashfulness He gave me: it’s saving me from corruption.

2 June    […] Had the old weakness after dinner, and on top of that, I couldn’t refrain from eating three glasses of ice cream. In the evening I read, thought, drank the waters at home, but did nothing. Although there will be spelling mistakes in Childhood, it will still be tolerable. My only thought about it is that there are worse stories; I’m still not convinced, however, that I lack talent. I think I lack patience, experience and clarity, and there is nothing great about my style or my feelings or my thoughts – I still have doubts, however, about the latter. […]

3 June    […] I notice in myself the signs of age. I feel and regret my ignorance and I say with all my heart the phrase which I have often heard elderly people use and which always used to surprise me: ‘I now regret that I didn’t study, but it’s too late!’ It’s sad to know that my mind is uneducated, imprecise and feeble (although supple), that my feelings lack constancy and strength, that my will is so wavering that the least circumstance destroys all my good intentions – and to know and feel that the germ of all these qualities is or was in me and only needed developing. How long have I endeavoured to educate myself! But have I improved much? It’s high time I despaired; but I still hope and count on chance, and sometimes Providence. I hope that something may yet arouse my energy and that I shall not for ever wallow, with lofty and noble dreams of fame, usefulness and love, in the dull slough of a petty, aimless life. I’m going to bed. It’s 9.10.

4 June    Usual routine; got on with A Letter from the Caucasus – not much, but well. I feel fine. At first I was too much addicted to generalisation, then to triviality, but now, if I haven’t found the mean, at least I understand the need for it and want to find it. Read Hours of Devotion,49 a translation from the German – a book which I would once have read without attention, or would either have enthused about or read with a sneer; but now it made a real impact on me. It confirmed my ideas about ways of improving my affairs and putting an end to quarrels. And I have now firmly decided to go to Russia at the first opportunity and coûte que coûte [whatever the cost] to sell part of my estate and pay my debts, and on my first encounter with people to put an end, peaceably and without vanity, to all former hostilities and to try in future by kindness, modesty and a benevolent outlook towards people to overcome my vanity. Perhaps this is the best way to rid myself of my inability to get on with people. […]

5 June    […] It is well known that in a whole forest you can’t find two leaves exactly alike. We recognise the difference in the leaves, not by measuring them, but by intangible features which spring to the eye. The difference between people, as more complex beings, is greater still, and we recognise it in just the same way by an ability to combine in one image all their features, both moral and physical. This ability forms the basis of love. From a collection of shortcomings one can sometimes form such an intangible but fascinating character that it inspires love.

7 June    Got up at 5.30, had a bath, drank the waters, felt well and at ease, did some copying and correcting till 6 in the evening, drank the waters and read the April Contemporary which is nasty in the extreme. Feel proud, I don’t know what about. But I’m satisfied with myself morally. I’ve still got a rash, and I’m sure it’s venereal disease, the mercury or the gold, despite the fact that the doctor says it’s nettlerash. […]

11 June    I’m better. Got up at 8 in spite of weakness and perspiration and did some writing and correcting. Had dinner, read about Charles I in Hume’s History. History is the best expression of philosophy. […]

13 June    […] There’s too great a friendship between the landlady and me. I’m distracted by everything and vain about everything. I used to be vain about my wealth and my name; now it’s my kindness and simplicity of manner. […]

16 June    Got up early and went to the baths; it made me somehow sad to look at respectable people. It occurs to me that I used to be one of them. Foolish vanity! I’m more respectable now than ever. Showed lack of restraint all day: guzzled Turkish delight, ice cream and all sorts of rubbish. […]

21 June    Got up early, had a bath, drank the waters, did some writing. Behaved well except for the fact that I couldn’t refrain from telling Buyemsky that he’s stupid. Didn’t do much work after dinner; chattered away to everybody at the waters and for no reason at all lied that I was a law school graduate. This circumstance so upset me that I began to walk along the boulevard aimlessly, like a man possessed. Busy at home getting my accounts and linen in order. Three roubles are missing; the landlady accused Ivan Moiseyevich, but I defended him warmly. Masha talked to me and sent me two roses by a little girl. I don’t like her any more, but I’m worried simply because I’m a man and she is a woman, and we live in the same yard. I’ve just discovered the expression ‘to contribute one’s mite’.

22 June    […] I notice that conversation is beginning to have a great fascination for me – even stupid conversation. […]

24 June    Was woken after midnight by Buyemsky and shouts from the neighbours. An old man had been wounded. I behaved weakly and inconsiderately, but not improperly. Ate Turkish delight and couldn’t sleep till morning. Drank the waters, had a bath, drank tea, read; the doctor came; I obtained some tickets, stayed a while at Buyemsky’s, got some books and began to read Confessions50  which unfortunately I can’t help criticising. […]

29 June    Got up at 9. The doctor came. He’s sending me to Zheleznovodsk. Copied out the latest chapters. Had dinner, did some writing, drank the waters, had a bath and came home very weak. Read Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard.51  It’s full of contradictions; unclear – abstract – passages and things of exceptional beauty. All that I’ve derived from it is a conviction that the soul is not immortal. If the idea of immortality requires the idea of the recollection of a former life, we are not immortal. But my mind refuses to understand infinity from one side only. Somebody said that clarity is the sign of truth. Although one may quarrel with this, nevertheless clarity remains the best sign, and one must always use it to check one’s judgements.

Conscience is our best and surest guide, but where are the signs which distinguish this voice from other voices? The voice of vanity speaks with equal force. An example – an unavenged insult. The man whose aim is his own happiness is bad; the man whose aim is the good opinion of others is weak; the man whose aim is God is great. But does the man whose aim is God find happiness in that? How foolish! And yet how fine these thoughts seemed to be. I believe in goodness and love it, but I don’t know what can show me the way to it. Is the absence of personal advantage not a sign of goodness? Yes, I love goodness; because it is pleasant, it follows that it is useful. What is useful to me is useful for a purpose, and is good only because it is good for me and in harmony with me. This is a sign which distinguishes the voice of conscience from other voices. But isn’t this a subtle difference – that what is good and useful (and where shall I put what is pleasant?) has the sign of truth – clarity? No. It is better to do good, without knowing how one knows what it is, and not to think about it. One can’t help saying that the greatest wisdom is the knowledge that wisdom doesn’t exist.

What is bad for others is bad for me. What is good for others is good for me. That is what conscience always says. The wish or the deed? Conscience reproaches me for actions committed with good intentions but which have bad consequences. The aim of life is goodness. This feeling is inherent in our souls. The means to a good life is the knowledge of good and evil. But is one’s whole life enough for this? And if we dedicate our whole life to it, may we not err and involuntarily do evil? We shall be good when all our strength is constantly directed towards this aim. One can do good without a full knowledge of what is good and evil But what is our immediate aim: study or action? And is the absence of evil good? Inclinations and fate indicate the path we must choose, but we must always work hard with goodness as our aim. Is any amusement or pleasure which brings no advantage to others an evil? My conscience does not reproach me for them; on the contrary it approves them. This is not the voice of conscience. Conscience sooner or later reproaches me for every minute used to no advantage (even though harmlessly). Variety of work is pleasure. I’m going to bed, it’s 10.45.

30 June    Got up at 8, had a bath, drank the waters at home, meditated, had dinner. […] Yesterday I dwelt on the question: are pleasures which bring no advantage bad? Today I assert that they are. The man who understands true good will not wish for anything else. Furthermore, not to lose for a single moment the power to learn to do good is perfection. Not to seek one’s neighbour’s advantage or to sacrifice it for oneself is evil. Between the one and the other – the greater or the lesser degree of activity – is an enormous expanse in which men have been placed by their maker and given the power to choose. I’m going to bed. It’s 11 o’clock.

1 July    Got up late, weather bad, went to the post, got some money and a letter about the promissory notes presented by Kopylov.52 I’ll write a letter to Andrey and Seryozhenka tomorrow. I could lose Yasnaya, and despite all my philosophy, this would be a terrible blow to me. […]

2 July    Got up at 5. Went for a walk, finished Childhood and revised it. Had dinner, read Nouvelle Héloise53 and wrote a draft letter to the editor.54 Justice is the least degree of virtue obligatory for everyone. Above it are the steps to perfection; below it – vice.

Is prayer necessary and useful?. Only experience can convince one. Does God answer our prayers, and can this urge to pray be observed in all men? Here are two proofs of its usefulness, and there are no proofs to the contrary. It is useful because it isn’t harmful, and also because it is moral solitude. […]

4 July    […] Had dinner, did nothing, drank the waters; looked at Kryukova with too much pleasure and said some spiteful things. Was imprudent enough to drink a bottle of sauerkraut, and as a result I’ve been jumping up and down and now I’m sweating.

The aim which I discovered in life no longer occupies me so much. Can it be that it isn’t a true and firm rule, but only one of those ideas which, under the influence of self-love, vanity and pride, disappear as quickly as they are born? No, this rule is a true one. My conscience tells me so. I want my whole life to be better and easier just as a result of this theory. No; this rule must be reinforced by actions, and then the actions can be justified by the rule. One must work hard. […]

7 July, Zheleznovodsk55    […] I must be quick and have done with the satire in my Letter from the Caucasus‚ for satire isn’t in my nature.56 […]

8 July    Got up at 8. Drank the waters, had a bath and got on reasonably well with A Letter from the Caucasus. Teeth ached; read the Confessions with great pleasure. Khilkovsky and Alifer arrived. Discussed my artillery plans with the former; he raised a sensible objection – the non-horizontal position of the wheels.57 I’ll think about it. Buyemsky joined in the conversation and I offended him. I’m going to bed with terrible toothache. It’s gone 10 o’clock.

9 July    Got up at 8. I’ve been suffering from toothache, but it’s better now; read the Confessions all day. The second part is completely new to me. Alexeyev came and said that I have to serve for two years. If that’s so I shall resign. My failures lead me to despise people’s opinions. Thank God for them. I’m going to bed. It’s 11 o’clock.

10 July    […] Here are two possible and delighful ideas – but too good to come true (1) To live à trois: Nikolenka, Masha and I. Valeryan, of course, would be in the way, but these three people are so good that they would make even him good. (2) To hand over Yasnaya to Nikolenka and receive 600 silver roubles a year. If I stay on in the service here I’ll do that. I’m going to bed. It’s 11 o’clock.

13 July    […] The desire of the flesh is personal good. The desire of the soul is the good of others. It is impossible not to admit the immortality of the soul, but it is possible not to admit its destruction.58 If the body is distinct from the soul and is destroyed, what is there to prove the destruction of the soul? Suicide is a most striking expression and proof of the existence of the soul; and its existence is proof of its immortality. I have seen that the body dies; therefore I suppose that mine will die too; but nothing can prove to me that the soul dies, and therefore I say that it is immortal – according to my concepts. The concept of eternity is a disease of the mind. […]

15 July    Got up at 6. Was rude to Buyemsky. Usual routine – health and state of mind. A Letter from the Caucasus is lying on the table, and I’m not getting down to it. I’m reading Rousseau and feel how much higher he is than me in education and talent, but lower in self-respect, firmness and good judgement. […]

18 July    Couldn’t get to sleep last night for a long time because of rheumatism and the moonlight; sat by the window and had many good thoughts. Got up late. Drank the waters, had a bath, met some people, walked about, talked and did absolutely nothing. I’m thinking out a plan for a Russian landowner’s novel with a purpose.59

This is how I pray: O God, deliver me from evil, i.e. deliver me from the temptation to do evil, and grant me good, i.e. the possibility of doing good. Am I to experience evil or good? – Thy will be done! Shall I never be able to conceive of the idea of God as clearly as the idea of virtue? That is now my strongest desire.

Punishment is an injustice. Retribution can never be determined by man; he is too narrow – he is a man himself. Punishment as a threat is unjust because man sacrifices a certain evil for a doubtful good. Banishment – even death – is just. Death is not an evil, for it is an undoubted law of God. The idea of God stems from man’s awareness of his weakness.

I’m going to bed. It’s 9.30. It seems to me that throughout my stay in Zheleznovodsk much that is good (sensible and useful) has been evolving and maturing in my head; I don’t know what will come of it.

20 July    Couldn’t sleep all night, got up at 6, drank the waters at home, went to see Roger.60 Moved into No. 8. Health seems better, but am still not doing anything. I’m stopping smoking from today. Tomorrow I’ll begin to revise A Letter from the Caucasus and replace myself by a volunteer. I’m going to bed. It’s 9.30.

22 July    Got up at 6. Weather vile, drank the waters at home and was sure that I’d got syphilis again. God’s will be done! All is for the best. All my illnesses have brought me an obvious moral advantage, and for this I thank Him. […]

23 July    Roger told me that I haven’t got syphilis. I’m doing nothing; still smoking. […]

3 August, Pyatigorsk    Got up early. […] Khilkovsky left. Was in an excellent frame of mind; spent the whole day in the garden. Read the Politique.61 In my novel I’ll expound the evil of Russian government, and if I find it satisfactory, I’ll devote the rest of my life to drawing up a plan for an aristocratic, elected government, combined with the monarchy, on the basis of existing elections. There’s an aim for a virtuous life! I thank Thee, Lord; give me strength.

6 August, Galyugay62    The journey: dreams, petty vexations, and muddle. I keep thinking and thinking about the expedition, but still haven’t decided on anything. I’ll think it over with my brother, and decide when I’m properly informed about everything. The future interests us more than the present-day. This tendency is good if we think about the future of the next world. To live in the present, i.e. to act in the best possible way in the present – that is wisdom. […]

17 August, Starogladkovskaya    Was present at the inspection. The best thing I can look forward to from the service is retirement. Came back from the inspection and slept till 9 o’clock. Head very clear. Causes of the decline of literature: reading light works has become a habit, and writing them an occupation. To write one good book in one’s lifetime is more than enough. And to read one.

Discipline is only necessary for conquerors. For every man there exists one special path along which every proposition becomes a true one for him. Nothing has so convinced me of the existence of God and our relations with Him as the idea that faculties have been given to all creatures in conformity with the demands which they must satisfy. Neither more, nor less. But why has man been given the faculty of understanding cause, eternity, infinity or omnipotence? This proposition (about the existence of God) is a hypothesis supported by signs. Faith, according to the degree of a man’s development, reinforces its correctness.

18 August    Here are four rules for people’s guidance: (1) Live for your own happiness. (2) Live for your own happiness while doing the least possible evil to others. (3) Do for others what you would wish them to do for you. (4) Live for the happiness of others. Spent all day on duty or with my brother and the officers. The plan of my novel is beginning to take shape.

25 August    Killed a snipe. Twice attended drill. No one can demand of himself the possibility of complete innocence. How often has the whole human race turned its back on justice? I must work with my brain. I know I would have been happier if I hadn’t known this sort of work. But God set me on this path: I must follow it.

26 August    Shooting. Five snipe. Drill. Invited Pakunka round. A good thing she didn’t come. I won’t walk down her street. I’m somehow afraid of my thoughts – I try to forget myself. Why force myself? I’m happier that way than when I think barren thoughts.

27 August    Drill. Shooting with dogs, killed a moorhen. Walked down her street.

28 August    I’m twenty-four, but have still done nothing. I feel that it’s not for nothing that I’ve been struggling with doubts and passions for eight years now. But what am I destined for? The future will disclose. Killed three snipe.

29 August    Went shooting with Nikolenka; killed a pheasant and a hare. Had a sleep and got a letter from Petersburg from Islavin (a vile letter which I’ll answer, not with sarcasm as I was intending to do, but with true contempt – silence) and from the Editor63 which made me absurdly happy. Not a word about money. I must write letters tomorrow to Nekrasov and Buyemsky – and do some writing myself.

2 September    Mounted drill. Killed three pheasants in the evening. What a delightful thing David Copperfield is.64

3 September    Saw the moon on my left. The soul’s bent is towards the good of one’s neighbour. The flesh’s bent is towards one’s personal good. In the mysterious union of soul and body lies the solution of contradictory urges. I couldn’t have had enough sleep, and when I came back from drill I was very much out of spirits. I’ll use all the time I’m forced to stay here to become better and prepare myself for the life I’ve chosen.

5 September    At home all day. A sore throat. Wrote a letter to Nekrasov.65 […]

19 September    Went shooting. The plan for my novel is now sufficiently advanced, I think. If I don’t get down to it now, it means I’m incorrigibly lazy.

22 September    My teech stopped aching and I was about to settle down to write when Tsezarkhan came and interrupted me. Went shooting with Sulimovsky and killed three pheasants. Read a History of the War of 1813.66 Only an idler or a person with no ability at all can say that he can’t find an occupation. To compile a true, accurate history of Europe in this century – there’s a task for a lifetime. There are few periods in history so instructive as this and so little discussed – discussed truthfully and impartially in the way we now discuss the history of Egypt and Rome. Such wealth and freshness of sources and unprecedented impartiality – it would be perfect. Before thinking of writing anything, another condition of beauty67 occurred to me which I hadn’t thought of before – the sharpness and distinctness of the characters.

29 September    […] Read the new Contemporary. One good story like my Childhood, but superficial.68

30 September    Unwell, pains in my leg and cheek-bones. Wrote a bit and went shooting. Got a letter from Nekrasov – praise but no money.

1 October    Got Shkalik69 out of the way; it’s reasonably good. If I write as much every day, I’ll have written a good novel in a year. […]

4 October    Solved the question of the conclusion of the novel:70 after distraint of his estate, unsuccessful service in the capital, flirtation with society life, the wish to find a mate and disappointment in the elections, Sukhonin’s sister will bring him to a halt. He will come to realise that his obsessions are not evil but harmful, that he can do good and be happy while enduring evil.

Killed four pheasants, went to the baths. Went to see Alexeyev who released me from orderly duty.

5 October    […] I think that here in the Caucasus I won’t be able to describe peasant life. This troubles me.

8 October    Spent all day until evening in a strange state of insurmountable apathy; could neither read nor write. Read some rubbish, then wrote 1½ sheets. I must abandon for ever the idea of writing without revising. Three and four times is still not enough. Sent Vanyushka to the barracks yesterday for insolence. I’m more than ever resolved to retire, no matter what the conditions. The service is a hindrance to the only two vocations which I am conscious of within me, especially the better, nobler and more important one, and the one in which I am more certain to find peace and happiness. Everything will be decided by whether Brimmer has recommended me or not.71 If he has, I’ll wait to write to Petersburg, but if not, I’ll apply to retire at once.

13 October    […] I want to write some Caucasian sketches to form my style and for money.72

19 October    Simplicity is the main condition of moral beauty. For readers to sympathise with a hero, they must be able to recognise in him their weaknesses as much as their virtues; virtues are possible, weaknesses inevitable. I have thought of studying music. From tomorrow I hope to begin work unremittingly, either at that or something else. The idea for my novel is a happy one – it may not be perfect, but it will always be a good and useful book. And so I must work and work at it unceasingly.

If a letter from the Editor should induce me to write some sketches of the Caucasus, here is a programme of them: (1) Manners and customs of the people: (a) The story of Sal …,73 (b) Balta’s tale,74 (c) The journey to Mamakay Yurt. (2) The journey to the sea: (a) The story of the German, (b) Armenian administration, (c) The journeyings of a wet-nurse. (3) War: (a) The march, (b) The advance, (c) What is bravery?75

Basis of ‘The Novel of a Russian Landowner’. The hero seeks in rural life the realisation of his ideas of happiness and justice. Not finding it, and being disillusioned, he wishes to seek it in family life. His friend, a woman, suggests to him that happiness lies not in an ideal, but in regular, life-long work, the aim of which is the happiness of others.

There is no love: but there is the physical need for intercourse and the rational need for a companion for life. A proof of the immortality of the soul is its existence. Everything dies, I shall be told. No: everything changes, and this change we call death, but nothing disappears. The essence of every being – matter – remains. Let us draw a parallel with the soul. The essence of the soul is self-awareness. The soul can change with death, but self-awareness, i.e. the soul, cannot die.

21 October    Didn’t write much (3/4 of a sheet). Was generally out of sorts all day; after dinner Yepishka interrupted me. But his stories are wonderful. Sketches of the Caucasus: (4) Yepishka’s stories: (a) about hunting, (b) about the old way of life of the Cossacks, (c) about his own expeditions in the mountains.76

26 October    A sore throat and toothache. Read Histoire des Croisades.77

28 October    From today I must calculate afresh the period of my exile. My papers have been returned; accordingly I can’t hope to return to Russia before the middle of 1854, i.e. before July, or to retire before 1855. I shall be twenty-seven. How old! Three more years’ service. I must use them to advantage. I must train myself to work. I must write something good and prepare myself for – i.e. draw up rules for – life in the country. O God, help me! Wrote very little, went shooting and chatted at Nikolenka’s. He’s an egoist.

29 October    […] Nikolenka came round and read me his hunting sketches.78 He has a lot of talent. But the form is not good. He ought to give up his hunting stories and devote more attention to descriptions of nature and manners and customs; they have more variety, and he does them very well. Wrote nothing and read nothing.

31 October    Wrote a little yesterday and today. I’ve got toothache. Read through my story, extremely mutilated.79

13 November    Drank a glass of chikhir, went out with the dogs, rode till nightfall, drank some more chikhir, called on Khilkovsky to return some money and stayed for a couple of hours. Nikolenka grieves me very much; he doesn’t love me or understand me. The strangest thing of all about him is that his great mind and kind heart have produced nothing good. Some connection is lacking between these two qualities. Yepishka put it very well when he said that I am somehow unlovable. This is certainly what I feel – that I can be no pleasure to anyone, and everyone is a burden to me. When I speak about anything, I involuntarily say with my eyes things which are no pleasure for anyone to hear, and I feel ashamed of myself for saying them.

14 November    Wrote quite well in the morning. Went riding; in the evening Yanushkevich came round and despite the fact that he is stupid and mean, I chatted to him with too much frankness. […] Drew up a short formulation of my creed: I believe in one, incomprehensible, good God, the immortality of the soul and eternal retribution for our acts; I don’t understand the secret of the Trinity and the birth of the son of God, but I respect and do not reject the faith of my fathers.

15 November    Went shooting, killed a boar. Bulka got hurt.80 Mistrustfulness and resentment of my brother have passed.

17 November    […] I must get used to the fact that nobody will ever understand me. This fate must be common to all people who are very difficult to get on with.

25 November, Starogladkovskaya    […] Read a criticism of my story with unusual pleasure,81 and told Ogolin about it.

26 November    Went shooting with Ogolin and stayed a while at my brother’s. After dinner I began to write well, and got a letter from Nekrasov. They’re giving me fifty silver roubles a sheet,82 and I intend to write some stories about the Caucasus without delay. Started today. I’m too proud to write badly, but I doubt whether I’m capable of writing another good thing. My whole body itches. […]

28 November    […] The time has passed for me to mill the wind. I definitely can’t write without a purpose or the hope of being useful. […]

30 November    Thought a lot, but did nothing. Tomorrow morning I’ll get down to revising the description of war,83 and in the evening to Boyhood which I’ve finally decided to continue. Four Periods of Life84 will be my novel up to Tiflis. I can write about it because it is a long way away from me. And as the novel of a clever, sensitive man who has lost his bearings, it will be edifying though not dogmatic. The Novel of a Russian Landowner, however, will be dogmatic. I’m beginning to regret that I’ve broken with my solitude; it was very sweet. My brother’s influence used to be very good for me, but now it’s more harmful, making me lose the habit of activity and careful consideration. All is for the best. That is so clear in my life. Great God, I thank Thee. Do not abandon me.

1 December    Spent all day writing the description of war. I don’t like anything satirical, and since it was all written in a satirical spirit, it will all have to be revised.

3 December    Wrote a lot. I think it will be good. And without satire. Some inner feeling speaks out strongly against satire. I even find it disagreeable to describe the bad sides of a whole class of people, let alone an individual. Kochkin and Buyemsky will be on the expedition. My sores are healing. I’m sure they were meant to stop me trying to seduce Pakunka. I thank Thee, God; do not abandon me.

6 December    Went to mass; settling accounts with Nikolenka made me angry; stayed at home and wrote a couple of sheets. Drank hot punch, porter and champagne, and played cards. Admired the respect the officers have for Nikolenka and how they use him as a mediator.

11 December    Was at Levin’s85 inspection. Went for a ride. Feel positively ashamed to be devoting my time to such follies as my stories when I’ve begun such a wonderful thing as The Novel of a Landowner. What use is money or foolish literary fame? Better to write something good and useful with conviction and enthusiasm. One never tires of that sort of work. And when I finish – as long as I still have life and virtue – something else will turn up.

15 December    […] I was thinking and dreaming all evening. I felt sad and depressed. I was unhappy. Really my situation is a difficult one. But I can’t help thanking God for having let me know true happiness, which consists in the approval of one’s conscience; but one can’t rely on this happiness, any more than on the happiness of the flesh. It can only be understood by the person who has experienced it, i.e. the person who constantly does good and is on the way to meet it. Not to mention small deviations from the path of goodness, I am acting badly in going on expeditions – and this, more than anything else, could destroy the true happiness which I ought to experience. But all the circumstances have worked out in such a way that I think Providence wants it so. I pray Thee, Lord, reveal to me Thy will. In order to be happy, one must constantly strive towards this happiness and try to understand it. It depends not on circumstances, but on oneself.

23 December    Out shooting, killed a pig, a wild cat and a hare. Merry-making at my place all evening.

24 December    Christmas Eve. Finished the story.86 It’s not bad.

26 December    Reading Lermontov for the third day. […]

27 December    Slept late; began writing my novel, but some officers interrupted me. Went for a ride, and read when I got back and wrote some poems.87 They came quite easily. I think they will be very useful for forming my style. I can’t help working. Thank God! But literature is rubbish, and I would like to have written down some rules here and a plan for the estate.

Notes

1 In his dialogue Politicus which Tolstoy read in French.

2 A village on the left bank of the Terek to the north of Groznaya.

3 A village on the left bank of the Sunzha to the east of Groznaya.

4 Actions in which Tolstoy narrowly escaped being hit by a shell.

5 Princess L. I. Volkonskaya, portrayed by Tolstoy as the heroine of A History of Yesterday and an important source for the character of Liza Bolkonskaya in War and Peace. (Letters, I, 194)

6 The entries for this period which have been included here were written on separate sheets of paper and did not form part of Tolstoy’s main diary.

7 Of Four Periods of Growth, i.e. Childhood.

8 The reference is obscure.

9 A Chechen from the village of Stary Yurt.

10 An episode later included in Hadji Murat.

11 A Chechen who changed sides and gave valuable help to the Russians through his knowledge of Russian and the Caucasus.

12 An ensign in No. 4 battery.

13 Literally to play a game like hockey in which a small, smooth round stone is hit with a stick.

14 Andrey Sobolev, a former serf who looked after Tolstoy’s father’s legal affairs and managed the Yasnaya Polyana estate. He was portrayed by Tolstoy in Chapter 5 of A Landowner’s Morning.

15 Histoire de la Révolution française.

16 Of the third version of Childhood.

17 An eccentric officer three times reduced to the ranks. He appears in a story by Nikolay Tolstoy, Hunting in the Caucasus.

18 An answer required by the Tula provincial administration in connection with Tolstoy’s resignation from the minor post he held, which had to be ratified before he could enlist in the regular army.

19 A humorous novel by Grigorovich, to some extent Gogolian in inspiration.

20 The second version of Childhood.

21 Possibly some thoughts on music in an article in Notes of the Fatherland on a journey by Dumas to Tunis, Morocco and Algiers.

22 When Tolstoy spent much time practising the piano and writing about methods of studying music.

23 Of Childhood – Chapters 16 ff. after Nikolenka’s move to Moscow.

24 N. I. Buyemsky, an ensign in No. 6 battery who is portrayed as Alanin in The Raid.

25 A lieutenant who had taken part with Tolstoy in the expedition of February 1852.

26 Buyemsky.

27 A reference to Yermolov’s remark that whoever serves for ten years in the Caucasus will either become a hardened drinker or marry a loose woman. Tolstoy uses the remarks in Chapter 33 of The Cossacks.

28 The only reference to Dzhemi is in a draft version of The Raid.

29 Of Childhood – before Nikolenka moved from the country to the town.

30 The first mention of what was to become The Raid.

31 More likely an article about the French zoologist published in the latest issue of the Reader’s Library.

32 A historical novel set in Catherine’s reign by a minor novelist and contemporary of Tolstoy’s, V. R. Zotov.

33 A town on the Terek not far from the Caspian Sea. Tolstoy went there to consult a doctor about suspected venereal disease.

34 A slightly inaccurate quotation (which I have corrected) from the chapter entitled ‘The Conquest’ in A Sentimental Journey.

35 David Hume’s history, which Tolstoy read in a French translation.

36 Eugène Sue’s novel Le Juif errant.

37 It is not certain what book or article Tolstoy read about Yermak, the ‘conqueror of Siberia’ in the sixteenth century.

38 Chapter 20 of the third version of Childhood (Chapter 19 of the definitive version).

39 Oreshinka or Oreshevka, a village to the north east of Kizlyar, close to the Caspian Sea.

40 On the Caspian Sea.

41 The only thoughts on the subject occur in draft versions of The Novel of a Russian Landowner.

42 A reference to Tristram Shandy.

43 The Novel of a Russian Landowner (eventually published as A Landowner’s Morning).

44 The original title of The Raid.

45 Chapter 27 of Childhood.

46 Letters, I, 25.

47 See the first chapter of The Raid.

48 The fourth version of Childhood.

49 A seven-volume work by the Swiss poet, historian and freemason J. H. D. Zschokke.

50 Rousseau’s Confessions made an ‘enormous impression’ on Tolstoy as a young man.

51 The fourth book of Rousseau’s Émile.

52 A letter from Andrey Sobolev, the manager of the Yasnaya Polyana estate, about financial transactions with a Tula merchant, N. F. Kopylev.

53 Rousseau’s novel.

54 Letters, I, 30. Tolstoy submitted the manuscript of Childhood to Nekrasov, the editor of The Contemporary, together with this letter.

55 A spa near Pyatigorsk.

56 The first drafts of The Raid contained satirical portraits of the general and some of the officers.

57 Tolstoy’s plan to build a new type of ammunition wagon.

58 Tolstoy’s alterations in the manuscript may have obscured the sense of this sentence.

59 The Novel of a Russian Landowner. Tolstoy’s purpose, as he later declared, was to show how impossible it was for an educated landowner of his time to live a good life as long as serfdom existed.

60 A young doctor in Zheleznovodsk.

61 Plato’s Politicus.

62 A village on the right bank of the Terek a few miles east of Mozdok.

63 From Nekrasov, with flattering remarks about Childhood. (Letters, I, 31, footnote)

64 Tolstoy evidently read Dickens’ novel in The Contemporary which serialised it in Russian translation during the course of 1851.

65 Letters, I, 31. The letter was eventually dated 15 September.

66 By A. I. Mikhaylovsky-Danilevsky. It was an important source book for War and Peace.

67 The expression ‘condition of beauty’ recurs in a moral context in the entry for 19 October 1852.

68 The History of Ulyana Terentevna by a contemporary Ukrainian writer, P. A. Kulish.

69 An unprepossessing character in the second chapter of The Novel of a Russian Landowner.

70 The Novel of a Russian Landowner. Sukhonin is the name of the hero.

71 Tolstoy was considering resigning from the army, but was waiting to see whether the authorities accepted Brimmer’s recommendation that he be promoted to the rank of officer.

72 The only sketch that has survived is his A Journey to Mamakay Yurt.

73 Presumably the Cossack girl Salamanida referred to earlier in the diary.

74 See 1851, Note 47. Probably a reference to the story of the Dzhemi family which found its way into a draft version of The Raid.

75 The programme entries under (2) and (3) came to nothing except for the discussions on the nature of bravery in The Raid and The Wood-felling.

76 Tolstoy made use of Yepishka’s stories in The Cossacks.

77 By the French historian J. F. Michaud.

78 Nikolay Tolstoy’s Hunting in the Caucasus was eventually published in The Contemporary in 1857.

79 See Tolstoy’s letter to Nekrasov of 18 November 1852 (Letters, I, 33) expressing his great displeasure at the cuts and alterations in the published version of Childhood.

80 Tolstoy’s black bulldog.

81 An article in Notes of the Fatherland by S. S. Dudyshkin.

82 A very generous payment for a new author.

83 The Raid.

84 Four Periods of Growth.

85 The commander of the 20th artillery brigade.

86 The Raid.

87 The few poems that have survived from the period 1852–4 include one called To a Trap – about a mouse in love whose passion gets the better of him and who is caught in a mouse-trap!

* Footnote by Tolstoy. I have now become too lazy to think and be convinced of anything. However, I neither believe nor doubt any less than before. There is equilibrium in everything. I have become too lazy to convince myself of anything, but I am also too tired to undermine my faith, and I carefully preserve those beliefs which my restless mind has left in peace, and I’m afraid to become disenchanted with them or even to think about them.

1853

1 January, Chervlennaya1    Took the field with the division:2 cheerful and well.

6 January, Groznaya    A stupid parade. Everyone drinks – especially my brother – and it’s very unpleasant for me. War is such an unjust and evil thing that those who wage it try to stifle the voice of conscience within them. Am I doing right? Oh God, teach me and forgive me if I’m doing wrong.

7 January    The morning was a muddle; in the evening Knoring arrived drunk with Gesket and brought some porter; I had a lot to drink. Some officers of the Tenginsk regiment and some wenches turned up from somewhere. I got drunk. Yanovich was drunk and started trying to break my finger and said I was being a fool. The physical pain and the wine made me furious, and I called him a fool and a child. With tears in his voice and a childish3  he started saying rude things to me. I said I didn’t want us to abuse each other like troopers, and that the matter couldn’t end there.

8 January    I told him this morning that I’d been drunk and apologised for what I’d said to him; but he was so ridiculous that he replied: ‘I pardon you; you were to blame.’ Tomorrow morning, as soon as I’ve said my prayers, I’ll ask him once more to apologise, regardless of who is there, and if he won’t, I’ll call him out. He’ll have the first shot and I won’t fire. I acted stupidly and badly. Yanovich is a good fellow, and I could do him a lot of harm by this affair. Nikolenka has left, but it was sad and painful for him to see this affair and not know how it would end. He’s an egoist; but still I love him and it worries me to have distressed him. Several times during these last two days I’ve thought of leaving the service; but on thinking it over carefully I see that I ought not to abandon the plan I’ve made – to go on the last expedition this year – in which, it seems to me, I’ll be killed or wounded. May God’s will be done! Oh Lord, do not forsake me. Teach me. Give me strength, resolution and wisdom.

9 January    I’ve carried out my intention. Yanovich readily apologised. But if only people could know what an effort it cost me to approach him once again. […]

12 January    […] I’ve planned a sketch: A ball and a brothel.4 My throat is sore, but I’m in good spirits.

21 January    Wrote a little, but so carelessly, so superficially and so little, that it’s as good as worthless. My mental faculties are so blunted by this aimless and disorderly life and the company of people who don’t wish to, and can’t understand anything that’s at all serious or noble. I haven’t a bean, and this state of affairs makes me fear that people will think badly of me, and that suggests that I might actually do something bad. I don’t want to play cards any more; I don’t know how God can help. A fat lot of good the Caucasus is doing me when I’m leading such a life as this here. […]

20 February, Camp on the Kachkalykov ridge    We marched from Groznaya to Kurinskoye without any action. Stayed there a couple of weeks, then camped on the Kachkalykov ridge. On the 16th there was an artillery action during the night, and on the 17th during the day. I behaved well.5 I’ve been winning at cards all this time, but now I haven’t a bean, although people owe me money. In that respect I’ve been too weak-willed, but in general I behaved well. Today Ogolin told me I would get a cross. God grant it – but only for Tula’s sake.

10 March‚ Camp by the river Gudermes    Didn’t get a cross, but was confined to the guard room thanks to Olifer.6 And so service in the Caucasus has brought me nothing but difficulties, idleness and bad acquaintances … I must put a stop to it soon. […] The fact that I didn’t get a cross distressed me very much. Evidently I’m not lucky. But I confess, this foolish thing would have been a great consolation to me. […]

16 April, Starogladkovskaya    Haven’t written my diary for a long time. Having arrived at Starogladkovskaya on 1 April, I’ve continued to live the same way as I lived on the expedition – like a gambler who’s afraid to count how much is chalked up against him. Lost 100 silver roubles effortlessly to Sulimovsky. Went unsuccessfully to Chervlennaya to get a medical certificate. Wanted to resign; but a false sense of shame at returning to Russia while still a cadet is definitely restraining me. I’ll wait for promotion, which is hardly likely – I’m already used to failures of all kinds. In Novogladkovskaya, if I didn’t sin on the Tuesday of Easter Week, it was only because God saved me. I want to get back into my old rut of solitude, orderliness, and good and wholesome thoughts and occupations. Help me, God! I’m now experiencing for the first time an exceedingly sad and painful feeling – regret at a youth wasted without profit or pleasure. And I feel that my youth has passed. It’s time to bid it farewell.

18 April    Got up early, read something by Avdeyev called The Flying Dragon,7 and wrote reasonably well. The plan of my story is only now beginning to take clear shape. I think the story might be good if I can manage to get round its crude side skilfully. Still I’ve spent a lot of time idly through not being used to work. I’ve just had an explanation about money matters – unpleasant as always – with my brother. After dinner I went to see Yepishka and talked to Salamanida; her breasts have got ugly, but I still like her very much. However, anything young has a powerful effect on me; every woman’s naked foot, it seems to me, belongs to a beauty.

19 April (Easter Day)    Didn’t go to church, and having broken my fast, ate some kulich8 which had been blessed. Did nothing all day. Played prisoners’ base9 with some officers and young lads; sent Vanyushka to Pakunka without success. Didn’t get drunk, nor did my brother, which pleased me very much. Alexeyev was particularly good-natured.

20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 April    Spent all these days almost the same way as the first: played prisoners’ base, admired the wenches and got drunk once at Zhukevich’s. Finished Christmas Night in rough. I’ll start correcting it. Today was a very unpleasant day. It started with my having diarrhoea in the morning, then nothing came from Kizlyar, then a horse was stolen. My present wishes are: to get a military cross and a commission on the spot, and for both my stories to be successful. […]

4, 5, 6, 7 May    Nothing special. Received forty roubles for the story by post. Wrote quite a lot today, altered and shortened some of it and gave the story its final form. I must have a woman. Sensuality doesn’t give me a moment’s peace.

8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 May    I’ve done nothing these seven days. Went to Kasatka’s – continued to drink in spite of the fact that I wanted to stop several times. My brother left today. I’ve received letters from Nekrasov, Seryozha and Masha – all about my writing, and flattering to my self-esteem. I’ve fully thought out my story Christmas Night. I want to set to and get back into the rut of an orderly life – reading, writing, orderliness and self-restraint. Because of the wenches I don’t have and the cross I won’t get, I live here wasting the best years of my life. Lord, grant me happiness!

15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 May    Twice had Kasatka. It’s bad. I’ve let myself go very much. I’ve given up the story10 and am writing Boyhood with the same enthusiasm with which I wrote Childhood. I hope it will be as good. My debts are all paid. A brilliant literary career is open to me; I ought to get a commission. I’m young and clever. It would seem there’s nothing else to wish for. I must work hard and restrain myself, and I may yet be very happy.

22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 May    Nothing special at all. Didn’t write much, but have finally thought out Boyhood, Youth and Early Manhood which I hope to finish. Today Alexeyev sent me a paper in which Brimmer promises to discharge me with a civil commission. When I think of my service I can’t help losing my temper. I haven’t decided on anything yet, although in accordance with my present view on life which is a continuation of the one I formed in Pyatigorsk, I oughtn’t to hesitate. I’ll think about it carefully. Still can’t get used to punctuality and orderliness, though I’m trying hard.

29 May    […] Having looked through article 56, I’ve decided to leave the army and have asked Alexeyev about this. Went to Kasatka’s; a good thing she didn’t let me in.

23 June    Haven’t written anything for nearly a month. Went to Vozdvizhenskaya during that time with my kunaks. Played cards and lost Sultan.11 Was almost taken prisoner,12 but on that occasion I behaved well, although too sentimentally. On getting back, I decided to spend a month here to finish Boyhood, but I’ve behaved in such a disorderly manner for a whole week that I’ve become very sad and depressed, as always happens when I’m dissatisfied with myself. Yesterday Grishka was saying that I was pale after the Chechens had nearly captured me, and that I didn’t dare to flog a Cossack who had struck a woman because he would have hit me back. All this so upset me that I had a very vivid and depressing dream and, on waking up late, read about how Aubrey endured his misfortune and how Shakespeare says that a man comes to know himself in misfortune.13 It suddenly became incomprehensible to me how I could have behaved so badly all this time. If I’m to wait for circumstances in which I can easily be virtuous and happy I shall wait for ever; I’m convinced of that. Wenches have led me astray. I’ll try to do good as far as I can, be energetic and certainly not act frivolously or do evil. I thank God for this frame of mind and I pray Thee – sustain it. I’ve done much evil of late; I’ve tried to talk wenches round, wasted money on trifles, wasted time I could have used to advantage, boasted, argued and got angry.

25 June    Got a letter today from Seryozha in which he writes that Prince Gorchakov wanted to write about me to Vorontsov, and also a paper about my resignation. I don’t know how all this will end, but I intend to go to Pyatigorsk in a few days’ time. I lack perseverance and persistence in everything. As a result I’ve become unbearably repulsive to myself recently since I began to pay attention to myself. Had I persisted in the vainglorious mood in which I came here I would have been successful in the service and would have had reason to be satisfied with myself; had I persisted in the virtuous mood I was in in Tiflis, I could have despised my failures and once again been satisfied with myself. In small things and in great, this failing is destroying the happiness of my life. Had I persisted in my passion for women, I would have had successes and memories; had I persisted in abstention, I would have been at peace with myself and proudly so. This damned detachment has completely led me astray from the true path of goodness on which I had just made such a good start, and on which I want to start again in spite of everything because it is the best one. Lord, teach and instruct me!

I can’t write. I write too sluggishly and badly. But what is there for me to do except write? I’ve just been thinking over my position. Such a crowd of motley thoughts went round and round in my head that for a long time I couldn’t understand anything except that I was bad and unhappy. After that period of painful reflection, the following thoughts took shape in my head: the purpose of my life is known – goodness – which I owe to my subjects and to my fellow-countrymen; I owe it to the former because I own them, to the latter because I possess talent and intelligence. The latter duty I am able to fulfil now, but in order to fulfil the former I shall have to use all the means in my power.

The first thought I had was to draw up rules of life for myself, and now I’m returning to it perforce. But how much time have I wasted in vain! Perhaps God organised my life like this in order to give me more experience. I would hardly have understood my purpose so well had I been happy in satisfying my passions. To determine my actions in advance and to verify their performance was a good idea, and I return to it. As from this evening, whatever circumstances I am in, I give my word to do so every evening. False shame has often hindered me from doing so. I give my word to try and overcome it as much as possible. Be straightforward, even abrupt, but be frank with everyone – but not childishly, needlessly frank. Refrain from wine and women. The pleasure is so slight, so blurred, but the remorse is so great. Give yourself up completely to everything you do. Refrain from action in response to every strong feeling, but think carefully and then act resolutely, even if mistakenly. I didn’t finish my prayers today, having a guilty conscience about A …14 Wrote little and without reflection. Ate too much, fell asleep from laziness, stopped writing on account of Arslan Khan’s arrival. Boasted of my connection with the Gorchakovs. Insulted Yepishka for no apparent reason. Wanted to have women. Boasted about my writings to Groman, to whom I read Karl Ivanich’s Story.15

Tomorrow I must get up early and write Boyhood until dinner; after dinner go to the Ukrainians and look for a chance to do a good deed, then write The Diary of an Officer in the Caucasus or The Fugitive until tea.16 Go for a run. Write Boyhood or Rules for Life.

26 June    […] Spent the greater part of the morning in experiments with revolving objects and was a child to do so. After dinner I went to the Ukrainians, but didn’t find a chance to do a good deed (disobeyed my conscience). Went several times to Yepishka’s; with regard to Salamanida things are making no progress, and Mikhayla, it seems, is determined to be on the watch. I’ve decided at all costs to have her. This enforced abstinence, it seems to me, gives me no rest and hinders my work; and the sin is petty, for the unnatural position in which fate has placed me excuses it. […]

29 June    Behaved well in the morning, but after dinner I did nothing. The plan I had thought out so well for the Notes of an Officer in the Caucasus17 seemed bad to me, and I spent all the afternoon with the boys and Yepishka. Threw Grishka and Vaska into the water. Not a good thing. I must always write, whether well or badly. If you write, you get used to work and form your style, even though there is no direct advantage. But if you don’t write, you get distracted and do stupid things. One writes better on an empty stomach. After supper I did the rounds of all the wenches, but no luck anywhere. Tomorrow I must write from morning till evening, and use every means to get a wench.

2 July    […] Salamanida has gone away for good, and Fedosiya, with whom I seem to be in love, won’t agree on the pretext that I’m going away. Wrote a letter to Nikolenka. Tomorrow I must overcome my shame and take decisive action with regard to Fedosiya. Write Boyhood morning and evening.

5 July    Got up late; wrote well, but not much. Spent all afternoon with the boys. I’m too frank, I’ve just been chatting about religion with Groman. Must write Boyhood tomorrow. Said nothing to Fedosiya despite the opportunities I had. Her face has been knocked about.

8 July    Got up late. Began to write but couldn’t get on. I’m too dissatisfied with my aimless, disorderly life. Read Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard, and, as always when I read it, it awakens a great many sensible and noble thoughts in me. Yes, my chief misfortune is my great intelligence. Slept after dinner, played a bit with the boys and acted very badly in not only not stopping them, but giving them an occasion to abuse Yepishka.

I can’t prove to myself the existence of God; I can’t find a single sensible piece of evidence, and I find the concept unnecessary. It’s easier and simpler to understand the eternal existence of the whole world with its incomprehensibly beautiful order than a being who created it. The craving of a man’s body and soul for happiness is the only path to an understanding of the mysteries of life. When the craving of the soul comes into conflict with the craving of the body, the former should gain the ascendancy, for the soul is immortal, and so is the happiness which it obtains. The attainment of happiness is the soul’s course of development. The blemishes of the soul are noble aspirations which have been flawed. Vanity is the desire to be satisfied with oneself. Greed of gain is the desire to do more good. I don’t understand the necessity for God’s existence, but I believe in Him and ask Him to help me to understand Him.

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 July (Pyatigorsk)    Left Starogladkovskaya without the slightest regret. On the journey Arslan Khan sickened me to death. On arriving at Pyatigorsk I found Masha18 launched into local society. It hurts me to see it – not, I think, from envy, but because it was unpleasant for me to part with my conviction that she is exclusively the mother of a family. However, she is so naively sweet that even in the wretched society here she remains her noble self. Sent letters to Baryatinsky – a good one. Brimmer – a reasonably good one, and Moureau – a nasty one. Valeryan is sensible and honest, but he hasn’t that fine sense of nobility which is necessary in a man if I am to become friendly with him. The Baron19 is a good man. How is it that Valeryan and Nikolenka lack the tact to refrain from laughing at people’s manners and appearance when they themselves are so bad in these respects? In general I felt sad and depressed. I shan’t experience this feeling, I’m sure, when I see Seryozha, still less Tatyana Alexandrovna. Yesterday I was tempted by a gipsy beauty, but God saved me. […]

17 July    […] The coldness of my relatives torments me. […]

18 July    […] Why does nobody love me? I’m not a fool, not deformed, not an evil man, not an ignoramus. It’s incomprehensible. […]

23 July    I’ve rewritten the first chapter20 reasonably well. Didn’t stay long at Masha’s. Work, work! How happy I feel when I’m working.

24 July    Got up at 8, revised the first chapter and wrote nothing all day. Read Claude Genoux.21 Went to Masha’s, where it was very dull. Bulka is lost. Got a letter from Moureau: Brimmer has held up my discharge. Must get up early and write, without stopping over what seems weak, as long as it makes sense and runs smoothly. One can revise, but one can’t recover time wasted unprofitably.

25 July    Worked all day, apart from three hours spent on the boulevard, but only rewrote one and a half chapters. The New View is forced, but The Storm is excellent.22 Chatted with Teodorina. My smile is uncertain; this sometimes disconcerts me. […]

27 July    […] Read Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, and it’s somehow difficult to write after him. I must write all day.

31 July    Did nothing, went to the fair, bought a galled horse for twenty-four roubles, slept, went to the fair again, walked along the boulevard and took a wench to the Yermolov baths. Looks as if I’ll be ill. Tomorrow – exchange the horse and go to Zheleznovodsk. Twenty-five roubles for the horse, one-thirty – the wench, one – the cab, seventy – small items. Fifty-six roubles left.

4 August, Zheleznovodsk 1, 2, 3, 4 August    Arrived at Zheleznovodsk, exchanged the horse, drank the first day with Felkersam and Valeryan. Teodorina is in love with me. […] How much company and books mean to me. With good people and bad people I’m quite a different person. […]

11 August, Zheleznovodsk    […] Tried to touch Teodorina several times during the evening; she greatly excites me. I’ve got a sore throat. But tomorrow I’ll do some writing. Kasatka has rewarded me with a dose of mercury, which I’m very cross about.

12 August    Did nothing all day on the pretext of illness. My throat really is worse and I’ve had a temperature all day so that my head refuses to work.

13 August    Ill all day, read Madeleine23 and was bled.

26 August    Did nothing. Decided to give up Boyhood, but to continue the novel and write the Caucasian stories.24 The cause of my idleness is that I can’t write with any enthusiasm. I’m expecting some happiness this month, and in general with the start of my twenty-sixth year. I want to force myself to be such as I consider a man ought to be. Youth is over. Now it’s time for work. […]

28 August, Pyatigorsk    […] Began a Cossack story25 in the morning, then because of Nikolenka’s arrival and Teodorina’s departure and my birthday I went to the shooting-gallery, rode to the colony and took Masha to the boulevard. Didn’t enjoy it. Only work can afford me pleasure and profit. I’m going to bed to read.

10 September    Did nothing, chatted with Masha, and made plans for our life together in Moscow. Idleness and the awareness of idleness torment me terribly. Tomorrow I’ll work, even though it’s rubbish, just to feel satisfied with myself, for a life of continual remorse is torture.

13 September    Felt terribly melancholy in the morning; after dinner I went for a walk, called at Bukovsky’s and Klunnikov’s, and picked up a repulsive wench. Then got the idea for Notes of a Billiard Marker26 – wonderfully good. Wrote, went to see the assembly hall, then wrote Notes of a Billiard Marker again. It seems to me that I’m only now beginning to write with inspiration, and that’s the reason why it’s good.

14 September    Finished the rough draft and in the evening I made a fair copy of a sheet. I’m writing with such enthusiasm that it’s even painful: my heart stops beating. I tremble when I take up the exercise book. Tomorrow Valeryan and Masha arrive. Teodorina is sulking, and I won’t go and see her any more.

18, 19 September    Did nothing; began writing today but laziness overcame me; went to Smyshlyayev’s in the evening and wrote some poems.

Humour is only possible when a man is convinced that his inadequately or strangely expressed thoughts will be understood. It depends on one’s mood and still more on one’s audience or one’s instinctive opinion of one’s audience.

29 September    In the morning I wrote a good chapter of Boyhood. After dinner I went riding from 6 to 8. Went to Aksinya’s. She’s pretty, but I don’t like her as much as before. Offered to take her with me. I think she’ll agree. For Grandmother’s Death27 I’ve thought up a characteristic trait of being religious and at the same time unwilling to pardon offences.

13 October, Starogladkovskaya    Went shooting, wrote letters to Maslov and Barashkin. Killed two pheasants. Read a literary description of genius today,28 and this work aroused in me the conviction that I’m a remarkable person as far as abilities and eagerness for work are concerned. From today I’ll get down to it. In the morning I’ll write Boyhood, and after dinner and in the evening The Fugitive. Thoughts of happiness.

14 October    Did nothing of what I’d intended, but was lazy and read. Wrote ¼ of a sheet of The Maid’s Room.29 Want to make it a rule, having once begun a thing, not to allow myself to do anything else; but so that thoughts which occur to me shouldn’t be lost, to note them down systematically in a book with the following subdivisions: (1) Rules, (2) Information, (3) Observations. Today for example: Observations: on singing and on Yepishka; Information: on the missions in North Ossetia and Georgia; and Rules: not to allow myself to be distracted by anything else before finishing the work I’ve started.

19 October    […] Thank God, I’m satisfied with myself, but I experience a strange feeling of unrest while being externally and internally calm, as if someone were saying to me: ‘Look, you’re good now, but nobody except you knows it.’

23 October    I woke up very late today and in the same dissatisfied mood. […] My bad mood and anxiety prevented me from working. I read Zhukova’s story Nadenka.30 Formerly it was enough to know that the author of a story was a woman for me not to read it, because nothing can be more ridiculous than a woman’s view of a man’s life which women often undertake to describe, while on the contrary a woman author has an enormous advantage in the woman’s sphere. Nadenka’s environment is very well described, but her person is too lightly and imprecisely sketched in, and it’s obvious that the author had no single idea to guide her.

I’m taking up my exercise book of Boyhood with a sort of hopeless aversion, like a workman compelled to labour at a thing which, in his opinion, is hopeless and no use at all. The work is going unsystematically, feebly and sluggishly.

When I’ve finished the last chapter I’ll have to revise it all from the beginning and make notes and do the final alterations in rough. Much will have to be altered: the character ‘I’ is colourless; the action is long drawn out, and too consistent in time but not consistent enough in thought. For example the device of describing past events in the middle of the action for the sake of the clarity and sharpness of the story has been sacrificed, given my division of the chapters. All during dinner and afterwards I couldn’t, and felt no need to overcome the apathetic boredom which had taken a hold on me. […]

‘Be content with the present!’    This rule which I read today struck me with extraordinary force. I vividly recalled all the occasions in my life when I hadn’t followed it, and it seemed to me very surprising that I hadn’t followed it. For example, in the most recent case of my own service, I wanted to be a count-cadet, a rich man with connections, a remarkable man, whereas the most useful and convenient thing for me would have been to be a soldier-cadet. How much of interest I could then have learned during this time, and how much unpleasantness I would have avoided. […]

24 October    Got up earlier than yesterday and settled down to write the last chapter. A lot of thoughts had accumulated, but some insuperable aversion prevented me from finishing it. As in everything in life, so in writing too, the past conditions the future – it’s difficult to resume a neglected work enthusiastically, and therefore well. Thought about some changes in Boyhood, but didn’t make any. I must jot down some notes off-hand and simply begin to rewrite it.

Before dinner I read a criticism of a description of the war of 1799 between France and Russia,31 and after dinner went off without any particular enthusiasm to shoot at a range with Groman. The beautiful weather tempted me, and I went off shooting, and killed a hare and chased a jackal till late at night. After supper I played cards till 12 o’clock. How easily bad habits are formed! I’m already in the habit of playing after supper.

When reading a work, especially a purely literary one, the chief interest lies in the character of the author as expressed in the work. But there are works in which the author affects a point of view of his own, or changes it several times. The most agreeable are those in which the author tries, as it were, to hide his own personal view, and yet at the same time remains constantly true to it wherever it does show. The most insipid are those in which the view changes so often that it gets lost altogether.

Milyutin’s book seems very well constructed; in spite of the flattery I have often heard and the partial opinions of people who timidly prostrate themselves before everything to do with royalty, it seems to me that Paul I’s character, especially his political character, was really noble and chivalrous. […]

25 October    […] I’m beginning to regret that I sent off Notes of a Billiard Marker too hastily. In content I could hardly have found much in it to alter or add to. But its form was not polished up quite carefully enough.

26 October    Got up late and with all my limbs aching with fatigue. Worked reasonably well in the morning copying out Boyhood and getting it into shape, but was soon called to dinner, and after dinner, having read a little and sat with Alexeyev who came to see me, I did very little. When I might have worked before supper, in order to please Groman who had been invited to do some copying for me, I dictated and read to him. My illness keeps getting worse and it isn’t, it seems, the same kind as before.

Absence of body, passions, feelings, recollections and time (i.e. eternity), is that not the absence of any life at all? What comfort is there in a future life if it is impossible to imagine it?

The description of the struggle between good and evil in a man who is attempting to do, or has just done an evil act has always seemed to me unnatural. Evil is done easily and inconspicuously, and only much later does a man become horrified and amazed at what he has done.

The common people are so far above us by reason of their lives filled with toil and privations that it is somehow wrong for the likes of us to look for and describe what is bad in them. There is bad in them, but it would be better to say only what is good about them (as about the dead). This is the merit of Turgenev and the shortcoming of Grigorovich and his Fishermen.32 Who can be interested in the faults of this pathetic but worthy class? There is more good than bad in them; therefore it is more natural and more noble to look for the causes of the former than of the latter.

In the old days I used to think that having once adopted a rule to be thorough and punctual in my occupations, I could follow it; then these frequently repeated and never accurately observed rules began to convince me that they were useless; but now I’m convinced that these fits, constantly getting weaker and then recurring again, constitute the normal condition of the periodic scrutiny of oneself.

One must accustom oneself always and in everything to write clearly and distinctly, otherwise one unconsciously conceals from oneself obscurity or inaccuracy of thought by unnatural turns of speech, crossings out and flourishes.

At dinner today there was talk about Pushchin,33 and such harshness is absolutely incomprehensible to me. How can a man sacrifice basic human feelings for comic effect?

Cyprus, which lies on the route from Smyrna to Jerusalem, is the birthplace of St George.

In the campaign of 1805, which ended with the Treaty of Vienna, the chief battles were Ulm, Wagram and Austerlitz.

Frugality differs from meanness by the fact that the former, having set limits however broad or narrow to one’s requirements, does not limit them any further, whereas meanness, without defining one’s requirements, always sacrifices them for the sake of acquisition.

Absalom was the son of David, took up arms against him with the Philistines, and was hung by his own hair. Had an astonishing dream today about Seryozha – a duel and some sweets.

26 October. Occupations for the day. Illness. About a future life. Struggle accompanying an evil act. Fishermen. Author’s view on the common people. Periodic scrutiny. Neatness and clarity of writing. About Pushchin. Cyprus. Campaign of 1805. Frugality and meanness. Absalom. Dream about Seryozha.

28, 29, 30, 31 October and 1 November, Khasav-Yurt34 – Spent 28 and 29 October in that conscious and depressed state of inactivity which arises from the unpleasant thought which constantly occupies me. […] On the 29th went shooting all day, chatted with Yepishka, played cards and read a biography of Schiller written by his wife’s sister.35 What is especially noticeable in it is the superficial view of a great man by a sentimental woman and a person too close to the poet, and therefore influenced by trifling domestic shortcomings, who had lost proper respect for the poet.

31 October    […] I read The Captain’s Daughter and, alas, I must admit that Pushkin’s prose is now old-fashioned – not in its language, but in its manner of exposition. Now, quite rightly, in the new school of literature, interest in the details of feeling is taking the place of interest in the events themselves. Pushkin’s stories are somehow bare. […]

It is impossible to comply with the resolutions of one’s rational will merely as a result of the expression of it. It is necessary to use cunning against one’s passions. To do good is pleasant for everybody, but the passions often make us see it in a false light. And reason, if it acts directly, is powerless against the passions; it must try to make one passion act against another. Therein lies wisdom. […]

Schiller quite rightly considered that no genius can develop in isolation; that external stimuli – a good book or conversation – do more to promote thought than years of solitary toil. An idea must be born in company, but its elaboration and expression take place in solitude. […]

One of the main reasons for the mistakes made by our wealthy class is the fact that we take a long time to get used to the idea that we are grown up. Our whole life up to the age of twenty-five and sometimes beyond runs counter to that idea; quite the reverse of what happens in the peasant class where a youngster marries at fifteen and becomes complete master of himself. I have often been struck by the independence and assurance of a peasant lad who, in our class, even if he were a very clever boy, would still be a nonentity.

It’s strange that we all conceal the fact that one of the main springs of our life is money, as though it were shameful. Take novels, biographies, stories: they all try to avoid money matters, whereas that’s where the main interest (or if not the main, the most constant interest) of life lies and where a man’s character is best of all expressed.

There is a category of kind, noble people (though for the most part unfortunate in life, and not respected), who seem to live only in order to wait for an opportunity to sacrifice themselves for someone else or for honour’s sake, and who only live from the time that sacrifice begins.

I have often had occasion to be surprised at and to envy the sound and clear-cut outlook of people who have not read much.

To look over every work that has been completed in draft, striking out everything superfluous and adding nothing – that is the first process.

When reading a story by an English lady,36 I was struck by the naturalness of her way of writing – something which I lack, and to acquire which I must work hard and take note. […]

Self-confidence and assurance (aplomb)37 depend, not on occupying a brilliant position, but on success in one’s chosen path, however insignificant it may be. […]

There are people, such as myself and such as I try to portray in the hero of The Novel of a Russian Landowner, who feel that they must appear proud, and the more they try to assume an expression of indifference on their faces, the more haughty they appear.

I am often pulled up in a work of literature by routine methods of expression which are not quite correct, sound or poetic, but the habit of meeting them so often makes me write them myself. These ill-considered, conventional mannerisms in an author, the inadequacy of which one feels but which one forgives because of their frequent use, will be for posterity a proof of bad taste. To tolerate these mannerisms means to follow the times: to correct them means to be in advance of them.

2, 3 November    […] Yesterday an argument arose between myself and some of the officers about the value of the conferment of titles; whereupon Zuyev, quite inconsistently, expressed envy of my title. At that moment the thought that he considered me vain about my title hurt my self-esteem; but now I’m heartily glad that he allowed me to notice this weakness in myself. How dangerous it is to trust thoughts that arise in the heat of an argument.

Always to live alone: that’s a valuable rule which I shall try to observe.

Almost every time I meet a new person I experience a painful feeling of disappointment. I imagine him to be like myself, and I apply that standard as I study him. Once and for all I must get used to the idea that I’m an exception; that I’m either in advance of my age or that I’m one of those incongruous, unaccommodating natures that are never satisfied. I must take a different standard (lower than my own) and measure people by it. I won’t be mistaken so often.

For a long time I deceived myself in imagining I had friends – people who understood me. Nonsense! I’ve never yet met a man who was morally as good as me, or who was willing to believe that I can’t remember one instance in my life when I wasn’t attracted by the good, and wasn’t prepared to sacrifice everything for it.

For that reason I don’t know any society in which I would be at ease. I always feel that the expression of my intimate thoughts will be regarded as falsehood, and that people won’t be able to sympathise with my personal interests.

Moved into lodgings yesterday. If I’m forced to spend a month here, I’m sure I’ll use it usefully. Already yesterday evening I felt that disposition towards genuine usefulness, the influence of which I experienced in Tiflis and Pyatigorsk. There’s no evil without good. Yesterday, at the thought that my nose might cave in, I imagined to myself what an enormous and beneficial stimulus that would give me in the direction of moral development. I pictured to myself so vividly how noble I would be, how devoted to the common good and how useful to it, that I almost wanted to experience what I used to call a calamity, justifying suicide.

However, this base thought, i.e. of suicide from the shame of being ugly, which I had heard expressed so well and eloquently by Islavin, I repeated without conviction. How often it happens that one repeats things without thinking about them, merely because they have been well expressed. […]

4 November    […] There are some faces, especially those with shining eyes and broad, perspiring features, which, when animated, continually change their expression to such an extent that it is difficult to recognise them. […]

5 November    […] I’m absolutely convinced that I’m bound to achieve fame; it’s actually because of this that I work so little: I’m convinced that I only need to have the wish to work upon the materials which I feel I have within me. […]

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 November, Starogladkovskaya    I’ve left almost half of Boyhood with Akrshevsky to copy out. Lost forty-two roubles to Sokovnin and left Khasav-Yurt owing about ten roubles. Visitors didn’t give me a moment’s rest there, with the result that I was thrown into complete confusion. I liked the fourteen-year-old girl who worked for the landlord very much. I’ve done hardly anything all these days. Since arriving in Starogladkovskaya I’ve been shooting once, solicited timidly and unsuccessfully for wenches and chatted with Yepishka and Olifer, whom I dislike very much. Borrowed twenty-five roubles from him. This morning I did such a vile thing that it made me come to my senses. […]

The laughter of people talking tête à tête has a completely different, more sincere and attractive character, than laughter in a large company.

To take firm resolutions of the will as rules for oneself in all matters is excessive, but in certain cases such rules are necessary.

I mustn’t touch a card, or ever watch people play.

There are thoughts whose applications are infinitely varied; therefore the more general the expression of such thoughts, the more food they provide for the mind and heart, and the more profoundly can they be felt.

I am replacing all the prayers which I have made up myself by the Lord’s Prayer alone. Any requests I can make to God are expressed more loftily and in a way more worthy of Him by the words ‘Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven’.

Abstract thoughts are nothing else but a man’s capacity in a certain state of mental activity to fix his attention on that activity without interrupting it and to transmit that state of mind to memory. There are thoughts which pass through the mind unnoticed; there are others which seem to leave a deeper trace, so that one involuntarily tries to grasp hold of them (such as the ones I am writing down). I sometimes forget the thought itself, but the trace it has made remains, and I feel that a remarkable thought has passed through my mind. […]

I have never made a declaration of love, but when I remember the terrible nonsense I talked to people I liked, with a subtle, meaningful smile, I blush at the mere recollection. The conversations one reads in our high society novels pour tout de bon [in all seriousness] are as like as two peas to what I said. […]

16 November    […] There was a time when consciousness had developed in me to such an extent that it stifled reason, so that I could think of nothing but: ‘what am I thinking about?’

I’ve often been struck by the way people can find inner satisfaction in their own phrases, devoid of thoughts – in words alone. Perhaps at a certain stage of development the mind is sympathetic towards words, just as at a higher stage it is sympathetic towards thoughts. Yepishka says that in order to speak wisely one must first stand for a while ‘by the broom’, i.e. go away into the corner and think.

17, 18 November    Got up early yesterday, but wrote little. Two chapters, ‘The Maid’s Room’ and ‘Boyhood’, which I’ve been unable for so long to put into final shape, held me up. Had dinner, played chess badly and boasted again. After dinner Lukashka announced that there would be a wench for me at dusk. I was stupid enough to give her the gold rouble she had been promised, and two silver roubles to him, although she turned out to be a repulsive old woman.

Got up late today. Wrote quite diligently, so that I finished ‘The Maid’s Room’ and ‘Boyhood’, though only in rough. In the evening Kochetovsky came and complained about Sulimovsky. I borrowed Karamzin’s history and read bits of it. The style is very good. The foreword38 aroused a host of good thoughts in me. Beat Alyoshka today. Although he was to blame, I’m dissatisfied with myself for having lost my temper. […]

Someone told Yepishka that I had had a man conscripted because he had killed my dog. Such a terrible slander always confirms me in the noble thought that to do good is the only way to be happy. If one looked at life from any other point of view whatsoever, such a slander would be enough to destroy all the happiness of life.

Some people seem to deceive themselves by trying to speak about their way of life in the past or in the future, but not in the present.

Nothing is such an obstacle to true happiness (which consists in a virtuous life) as the habit of expecting something from the future – whereas for true happiness, which consists in inner self-content, the future can give nothing, while the past gives everything.

The younger a man is the less he believes in goodness, despite the fact that he is more ready to believe in evil.

The specific gravity of a man’s body is heavier than the specific gravity of water. The air which fills the body of a live man equals this difference, so that (with movement) the specific gravity of a live man is about equal to that of water. When the stomach of a drowned man bursts, the air which filled the empty spaces of the body gives way to water and the body floats. All this is nonsense, and I still don’t understand the phenomenon of the floating of the body of a drowned man.

19, 20, 21, 22 November    […] One of my chief and, for me, most unpleasant vices is lying. The motive for it is usually boasting – the desire to show myself off to advantage. Therefore, so as not to allow my vanity to reach a stage of development in which there is no time to stop and reflect, I set myself a rule: as soon as you feel the tickling sensation of self-love which precedes a desire to say something about yourself – reflect. Keep silent and remember that no fabrication can give you more weight in the sight of other people than the truth, which has a tangible and convincing character for everyone. Every time you feel vexation and anger, beware of all relations with people, especially those dependent on you. Avoid the company of people who like getting drunk, and don’t drink wine or vodka.

Avoid the company of women you can have easily, and try to exhaust yourself by physical labour when you feel strong desire. Note down every day, from today, violations of these rules.

Fashion is a means of attracting attention to oneself, and everyone (except the deformed and those with unpleasant, repulsive features) gains by it.

There is a belief among the common Russian people that a ‘black’ person (a brunette) cannot be good-looking, and black is even a synonym for bad: ‘black as a gipsy’.

Music is the art of producing various states of mind in the imagination by means of a triple combination of sounds – in space, time and strength.

The majority of men demand from their wives qualities which they themselves don’t deserve.

Sermons are one of the best and simplest means of the religious education of our lower classes, if only preachers would sacrifice their self-esteem as authors for the sake of the benefit which a consistent, simple and clear exposition of Christian principles in the course of their sermons would provide, or if they would take pains in composing them.

When composing them it is necessary to avoid pomposity (which results in obscurity), as well as excessive simplicity which arouses doubts.

There is a belief among the common people that the presence of onlookers at a deathbed is agonising for the person dying, and that it makes it more difficult for the soul to leave the body (the same with childbirth).

The tone of a man I am talking to is always involuntarily reflected in me: if he speaks pompously, so do I; if he mumbles, so do I; if he is stupid, so am I; if he speaks French badly, so do I.

The common people are used to being spoken to in a language not their own, especially with religion which speaks to them in a language they respect all the more for not understanding it.

There are thoughts (such as these, for example) which have meaning in a general connection, but lose it altogether in isolation.

23 November39 to 1 December    I’ve been out shooting several times, and killed some hares and pheasants. I’ve hardly read or written anything all these days. The expectation of a change in my life disturbs me;40 while the grey overcoat is so repulsive that it’s painful (morally) for me to put it on, which wasn’t so before. Yesterday Sultanov called in. Got a letter and a sword from Arslan Khan the day before yesterday. I’ve broken one of the rules I made – not to drink – every day. […]

Discipline is necessary for the existence of a military class and drill is necessary for the existence of discipline. Drill is a means of bringing men to a state of mechanical obedience by means of petty threats. As a result, the cruellest punishments don’t produce the sort of subordination which is produced by the drill-habit.

Modesty is often taken for weakness and irresolution; but when experience proves to people that they were mistaken, modesty imparts a new charm, strength and respect to a character.

(Schiller) For some people the fire of inspiration is transformed into a lamp to work by. Literary success which satisfies oneself is only achieved by working at every aspect of a subject. But the subject must be an elevated one for the work always to be pleasant.41

The more a man grows used to what is pleasant and refined, the more deprivations in life he stores up for himself. Of all such habits, deprivation of the habit of associating only with refined types of mind is the hardest to bear.

Vladimir was able to convert his people to the faith he had adopted only because he was on the same level of education as they were, though higher than them in social importance. The people trusted him. No ruler of an educated nation could have done the same.

In one of his stories Yepishka admirably expressed in a few words the Cossack view of the importance of women. ‘You, wife, are my slave – get on with your work’, a husband says to his wife, ‘I’m going off on a spree.’ […]

2 December    […] There are two desires, the fulfilment of which can constitute a man’s true happiness – to be useful and to have a clear conscience.

Vanity results from, and is increased by moral disorder in a man’s soul. Previously I only understood this instinctively: I had a presentiment of the need for order in everything; only now do I really understand it. […]

I have decided, having finished Boyhood, to write some short stories, sufficiently brief for me to be able to think them out all at once, and of a sufficiently elevated and useful content for them not to weary or disgust me. Apart from that, I’ll draw up in writing in the evenings a plan for a big novel and sketch some scenes from it. […]

3 December    Got up early but couldn’t begin anything. My Cossack story both pleases and displeases me. Read The History of the Russian State till dinner, and after dinner Olifer said in the presence of a copyist and a servant that I would be sure to squander all my estate. This rudeness or stupidity annoyed me. I promised myself not to go to dinner with that exceedingly unruly man before Alexeyev’s return and definitely to avoid all relations with him. […]

I have a great defect – an inability to narrate simply and easily the circumstances in a novel which connect the poetic scenes together. […]

I have been undecided which of four ideas to choose for a story: (1) The Diary of an Officer in the Caucasus‚42 (2) A Cossack Poem‚43 (3) A Hungarian Girl‚44 (4) A Man who Came to Grief.45 All four ideas are good. I’ll begin with the one that seems the least complicated, easiest and first in order of time – The Diary of an Officer in the Caucasus.

11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 December    […] Started Notes of a Bombardier46 yesterday, but have written nothing today. I’ve finished Karamzin’s History.

For some reason the idea of power is involuntarily associated for me with the shape of a hand – especially a beautiful one. Sometimes when looking at a beautiful hand one imagines: ‘What if I were to be dependent on that man?’ […]

Read Pisemsky’s story The Wood-Demon.47 What affected language and what an improbable subject! […]

As I was being shaved today I vividly imagined to myself how a mortal wound inflicted on an already wounded man must instantly change his state of mind – from desperation to gentleness. […]

Sulimovsky with his usual rudeness told me how Pistolkors is abusing me because of Rosenkranz;48 this greatly distressed me and cooled my ardour for literary work, but the announcement of The Contemporary’s plans for 1854 spurred me on to it again.49

17 December    […] Read The History50 all day. […]

Ustryalov names as characteristics of the Russian people: devotion to their faith, bravery, and the belief in their own superiority over other peoples, as though these were not the general characteristics of all peoples, and as though the Russian people had no distinctive characteristics of its own. […]

Every historical fact needs to be explained in human terms, and routine historical expressions avoided.

As an epigraph to a work of history I would write: ‘I will conceal nothing.’ It’s not enough not to lie directly; one must try not to lie negatively – by keeping silent. […]

19, 20 December    Wrote nothing yesterday, although I felt better. I’m worse today because of yesterday’s rashness, and wrote nothing all day again on the pretext of anxiety. Read the magazines and thought.

One thing which, so it seems, has compensated me for my month’s inactivity is the fact that the plan of The Novel of a Russian Landowner has clearly taken shape. Previously, while I sensed in advance the wealth of content and the beauty of the idea, I wrote haphazardly. I didn’t know what to select from the host of ideas and scenes to do with the subject. […]

Reading Karamzin’s51 philosophical foreword to the journal Morning Light which he published in 1777 and in which he says that the aim of the journal is the love of wisdom, the development of man’s mind, will and feeling by directing them towards virtue, I was surprised that we could have lost the idea of the one and only aim of literature – the moral aim – to such an extent that if you were to speak nowadays of the necessity for morality in literature, nobody would understand you. But really it would not be a bad thing in every work of literature – as in fables – to write a moral, expressing its aim. Morning Light published reflections on the immortality of the soul, the destiny of man, Phaedon, the life of Socrates, etc. Perhaps this was going to extremes, but nowadays we have gone to a worse extreme.

Here is a noble aim, and one within my powers – to edit a journal whose aim would be solely to disseminate (morally) useful works of literature, and for which works would only be accepted on condition that they were accompanied by a moral, the printing or non-printing of which to depend on the author’s wishes. Apart from the fact that polemics and the ridiculing of anything at all would without exception be excluded from such a journal, it would not conflict with other journals in the line it took. […]

Somebody said that a knowledge of painting is necessary to a poet. I understood this today when reading a wonderful article about an exhibition.52

For a work to be attractive, it is not enough for it to be governed by a single thought; it must be wholly imbued with a single feeling. That wasn’t so with my Boyhood.

21 December    Health a bit better, but I can’t feel at ease yet. I’ll go to Kizlyar tomorrow if I’ve not completely recovered. Got a letter from Zuyev and one from Akrshevsky; he hasn’t done the copying and hasn’t returned Boyhood. This infuriates me. Boyhood is woefully weak – it lacks unity and the language is poor. Haven’t even read anything. Sultanov came and exchanged dogs. […]

29, 30, 31 December    On the 29th went shooting all day and didn’t kill a thing. Yesterday I got on with The Novel of a Russian Landowner in the morning; in the evening I suffered from charcoal fumes and slept. This morning I got on with The Novel of a Russian Landowner, and in the evening went shooting and to the baths. After supper I wrote letters to Valeryan and Tatyana Alexandrovna.

Saw the New Year in writing letters and then prayed. Alyoshka has left. Received a letter from Valeryan and Masha which altered my feelings towards her.

The manner adopted by me from the very beginning of writing short chapters is the most suitable one.

Each chapter should express only one thought or only one feeling.

Notes

1 A village some twenty miles from Groznaya.

2 In a campaign against Shamil which lasted until the middle of March.

3 A word is missing in the manuscript.

4 The first mention of the unfinished story Christmas Night.

5 He was recommended for promotion as a result.

6 A George cross for which he had been recommended for his part in the winter campaign of 1852 and which he had not received because his papers releasing him from his official post in Tula had not arrived in time. Tolstoy was arrested on Olifer’s orders for not turning up for guard duty during an inspection.

7 Avdeyev’s novel which was published in Notes of the Fatherland in 1853 was in fact called The Fiery Dragon.

8 A rich Easter shortcake.

9 An open-air game in which two teams, one in each camp, try to capture each other.

10 Christmas Night.

11 His horse.

12 The incident has been fully described in Poltoratsky’s Memoirs, and Tolstoy may have drawn on it when writing A Captive in the Caucasus.

13 Charles Aubrey, the hero of Samuel Warren’s novel Ten Thousand a Year (1839), which appeared in Russian translation in Notes of the Fatherland in 1852 entitled Litigation. Nestor’s speech in Act I, Scene iii of Troilus and Cressida (‘In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men …’) is paraphrased by Aubrey.

14 Probably Alyoshka (Alexey Orekhov), Tolstoy’s man-servant.

15 From Childhood.

16 The original titles of The Wood-felling and The Cossack respectively.

17 A slight variant of the first title.

18 His sister.

19 Baron I. Y. Felkersam, a Cossack adjutant.

20 Of Boyhood.

21 Probably a slip of the pen for Claude Gueux, a novel by Victor Hugo.

22 Chapters 3 and 2 respectively of Boyhood.

23 Probably the novel by Paul de Kock.

24 To continue The Novel of a Russian Landowner and write The Wood-felling.

25 The Fugitive (the original title of The Cossacks).

26 The story is entitled Reminiscences of a Billiard Marker in the Letters. Tolstoy wrote the story in a few days and sent it to Nekrasov on 17 September.

27 Chapter 23 of Boyhood.

28 By Isaac Disraeli. Essays by him were published in translation in The Contemporary in 1853.

29 Chapter 18 of Boyhood.

30 M. S. Zhukova (1804–55), a minor woman author whose story Nadenka was published in The Contemporary in 1853.

31 A review of volumes 4 and 5 of D. A. Milyutin’s five-volume work A History of the War between Russia and France in the Reign of Paul I in 1799.

32 Grigorovich’s novel Fishermen was published in The Contemporary in 1853.

33 The reference is obscure. In the following paragraphs Tolstoy continues his recently adopted practice of noting down in his diary odd scraps of factual information – not always accurately, as for example his reference to Absalom taking up arms with the Philistines.

34 A stronghold some twenty-five miles south of Starogladkovskaya.

35 An abridged and unsatisfactory translation in The Contemporary of Karoline von Wolzogen’s Schillers Leben.

36 Probably not an ‘English’ lady; it is possible that Tolstoy was referring to Mrs Beecher Stowe, whose book Uncle Tom’s Cabin had just been published in The Contemporary.

37 In English in the original.

38 In the foreword to his twelve-volume History of the Russian State Karamzin attempted to define his views on history and its purpose.

39 Tolstoy wrote 23 October. His wife corrected it to November.

40 A reference to his promotion to officer rank and his impending posting to the Danube Army.

41 Culled by Tolstoy from the work referred to in Note 35.

42 One of the original titles of The Wood-felling.

43 The Cossacks, which was originally begun in verse form.

44 Nothing came of this idea.

45 The original title of Reduced to the Ranks (later published as Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment).

46 One of the original titles of The Wood-felling.

47 A story abounding in rare words and neologisms. Pisemsky is best known for his gloomy novel A Thousand Souls.

48 Because Tolstoy used him as the model for Rosenkranz in The Raid.

49 An editorial article announced that the journal’s plans for 1854 included the publication of a story by Tolstoy.

50 N. G. Ustryalov’s Russian History.

51 The foreword to Novikov’s monthly journal was in fact written by Novikov and not Karamzin.

52 An article in The Contemporary about an exhibition of manufactured goods held in Moscow in 1853.

1854

2 January, Starogladkovskaya    Got up late, spent all morning writing the third chapter, His Past.1 It seems good; at least I wrote with enthusiasm. […]

Must copy into my diary only thoughts, information or notes relating to proposed works. When starting each work, look through the diary and copy out in a separate exercise book everything relating to it. Copy out rules from my diary each month. Recall each day and note down in pencil all infringements of the rules, and copy them into the diary.

4 January    Had intended to write The Novel of a Russian Landowner in the morning, and Notes of a Bombardier in the evening, to go shooting if the weather was good and to ask for money. Spent all morning writing The Novel of a Russian Landowner, but wrote so little and so unsatisfactorily that I went on with it from dusk till supper, but only made deletions. After dinner I read The Invalide.2 […]

5 January    […] I’m often held up when writing by the wish to insert some good or well expressed thought; therefore if a particular thought should prove difficult to insert somewhere, copy it down in the diary without being delayed by the wish to introduce it at one particular point. The thought will find its place of its own accord.

6 January In the morning ‘The Novel of a Russian Landowner’.    Copied out the fifth chapter, Ivan Churis, from the old exercise book in the morning, but used my cold as an excuse to be lazy. Walk till dinner. I’d only just gone out when I was summoned to dinner; after dinner I went for a walk, drank coffee and played with the boys. Write ‘Notes of a Bombardier’. Opened the exercise book, but wrote nothing, and chatted till supper with Chekatovsky about the men. Over supper we struck up a metaphysical conversation. After supper I had an enjoyable chat with Yepishka.

Impassivity – i.e. always the same, cool outlook on life – constitutes the wisdom of old men. […]

I met a morose soldier who had lost a leg, and asked why he had no cross. ‘Crosses are only given to those who groom their horses well,’ he said as he turned away. ‘And to those who cook a nice dish of porridge,’ some little boys who were following him added with a laugh. […]

Keep your clothes neat and tidy; it gives you self-confidence and composure in your bearings. […]

7 January    […] A Russian – or generally speaking any ordinary person – loves in a moment of danger to show that he feels, or actually does feel more fear of losing things entrusted to him or his own things, than of losing his life. […]

Yepishka and Gichik used to set off at twilight in stormy weather and ride till cock-crow. In order to find out where the auls and herds of horses were, Yepishka would howl like a wolf. When the dogs responded, they would ride up to the aul, catch the horses and drive them home. But often they got lost – and not to return home by dawn would have meant trouble – so then Yepishka would dismount and let his horse go on ahead, saying he would kill it if it led him astray. The horse would lead him back to the Cossack stanitsas, and then Gichik, having first tied the horses up in the underwood would ferry Yepishka across the river, and the latter would then drive the horses into the mountains, sell them for a tenth of their value, hide the banknotes in his boot-legs and return home. […]

8 January    In the morning ‘The Novel of a Russian Landowner’. Couldn’t get on with the writing somehow. Must follow the rule of cutting out and not adding. Dined early. Go for a walk. Went for a walk after dinner. In the evening write ‘Notes of a Bombardier’. Wrote quite a lot, but began late because of the cold. Lay on the stove for a couple of hours in the twilight. Must be alone. Nobody called. The terrible cold has been hindering me a lot for two days now.

Must write a rough draft without thinking about the right place for the thoughts or their correctness of expression. Copy it out a second time, cutting out everything superfluous and giving each thought its proper place. Copy it out a third time, concentrating on the correctness of expression.

Avoid censure and gossip.

Soldiers wear cloth chest-protectors.

Avoid any movement or expression which might hurt anyone. […]

12 January    In the morning go for a walk and get on with ‘The Novel of a Russian Landowner’. Got up very late. Warmed myself by the stove – almost poisoned myself with the fumes – but my cold got worse. Then Ogolin came and I wrote nothing. Go for a walk. Did so. After dinner, thoughts and rules. Got back home, lay on my bed and fell asleep. Woke up, opened my exercise book and thought about a basic idea, but didn’t write it down. In the evening ‘Notes of a Bombardier’. Opened my exercise book again but instead of writing, dreamed about the Turkish War and Kalafat.3 Learned at supper that I’ve been transferred to the 12th Brigade,4  and decided to go home.

Avoid all expenses incurred out of vanity.

The satisfaction of physical passions is only possible in the present. The satisfaction of mental passions (ambition, love of money) – in the future. The satisfaction of one’s conscience – in the past. […]

16 January    […] Remember that when preparing for success in anything it’s necessary to begin on the bottom rung. In the law courts – as a clerk.

I was struck today by the poetic beauty of the winter weather. In the sky a mist got up and the pale sun shone through it. On the roads the dung is beginning to thaw and there is a damp moisture in the air. […]

17 January    Revise ‘Boyhood’. In the morning I didn’t have time to say my prayers before the officers arrived. Went to chapel with them. Came back home and remembered I’d forgotten my rule for Saturdays5 and re-read my diary, took stock and copied out a few things. […]

Avoid unnecessary frankness.

Avoid the familiarity and favours of people you are not sure of.

In moments of indecision act promptly, and try to take the first step even though it may prove superfluous. […]

19 January, Shchedrinskaya6 (Tuesday)    Finish ‘Boyhood’ and leave. Did so. Got up early and wrote or was busy until the moment I left. Had a church service held – out of vanity. Alexeyev took leave of me very kindly. He and Zhukevich shed tears. Got as far as Shchedrinskaya. Re-read Boyhood and decided not to look at it again until I get home, but to write my ‘Caucasian’ Notes of a Bombardier on the journey.

Was very surprised yesterday by the fact that the rules which I’ve drawn up with such an effort have all been written – and much better too – in an ABC book; so it seems that my writing them down was useless – though not the rules themselves. My Franklin Journal is another matter. I must write out my chief faults and try to avoid them. Also write my thoughts down. So the only change in the manner of my occupations is that my exercise book of rules is to be replaced by the Franklin book.

Today, while thinking of the fact that I’ve become fond of people whom I previously didn’t respect – my fellow officers – I remembered how strange Nikolenka’s affection for them had seemed to me. And I explained my change of view by the fact that in the Caucasian service and in many other close-knit circles of people one learns not to pick people out, but to see what is good even in the bad ones. […]

I have decided to make the following alterations in Boyhood.

(1) Shorten the chapter ‘On the Highroad’. (2) The Storm – simplify the expressions and cut out the repetitions. (3) Make Masha more respectable. (4) Combine The Bad Mark with The Fraction. (5) The Little Key – add what I found in the portfolio. (6) Alter Day-dreams about Mother. (7) Find a title for Keep on grinding and there’ll be flour. (8) Dubkov and Nekhlyudov – alter the beginning and add a description of ourselves and of our attitude during the conversation.7 […]

20 January, Stary Yurt    Got up early. Reached Nikolayevskaya and Stary Yurt. The news that I hadn’t got a cross distressed me very much; but strange to say – an hour later I had calmed down. Sulimovsky has obtained an escort for me, and I’m travelling tomorrow, non-stop. […]

21 January, Galyugayevskaya    […] Here is a fact which needs to be remembered more often. Thackeray spent thirty years preparing to write his first novel, but Alexandre Dumas writes two a week.

You shouldn’t show your writings to anyone before they are published. You’ll hear more harmful opinions than useful advice. […]

22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 January    On the road. Was lost all night at Belogorodtsevskaya, 100 versts from Cherkassk, and the idea occurred to me of writing a story The Snowstorm.8 […]

I’m too sociable – I’m fond of people and because of this I waste time, relax my rules and sometimes forfeit people’s respect.

Nothing on the road cheered me so much and so reminded me of Russia as a baggage horse which laid back its ears and despite the speed of my sledge tried to overtake it at a gallop. […]

28, 29, 30, 31 January, 1, 2 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Was exactly two weeks on the road. The only striking thing that happened was the snowstorm. Behaved quite well. My mistakes were: (1) Weakness with other travellers, (2) Lying, (3) Cowardice, (4) Got angry a couple of times.

Nikolenka and Seryozha aren’t here, but there’s so much that I want to think about, to do and to feel, that I won’t write much in my diary.

2 February    Woke up late, talked to the headman and to Osip and found everything in better order than I expected. Walked round the estate. Felt unwell. Valeryan arrived. […]

3 February    Woke up early with a sore throat, despite which I rode to the mill and looked at a site for stables. Talked more and more about farming, sent a letter to Shchelin. They say I’ve been promoted.9 […]

4 February    […] The chief defect and peculiarity of my character is that I remained morally young for too long, and only now at the age of twenty-five am I beginning to acquire a man’s independent outlook on things which others acquire well before twenty. […]

5 February    […] Was lazy all day. Gave three roubles to a poor woman. Have twenty-six roubles thirty copecks left. Am 240 roubles in debt. […]

6 February    […] Events from 17 January to 6 February. Left for Stary Yurt on the 19th and learned of my failure to win a cross. Had a bad journey and lost my way for one memorable night. Arrived at Yasnaya on 2 February, tired and unwell; found my affairs in order but myself a back number, a better, but an older man. My brothers have gone to Moscow. Arsenyev is dead, Cherkassky and Neratov have cut their throats.10 Went to Tula on the 6th, finished my business with Gelke and learned about my promotion. Occupations. Finished ‘Boyhood’. Decided to put an end to copying out and classifying my rules. Thought up three rules necessary for success in life. Gave a lot of instructions, wrote a few letters but in general have rather lost the habit of orderliness and activity. […]

13 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Finished the business of the will11 on the 11th and set off at 10 o’clock; had a pleasant chat on the journey with Vergani12 and found all my brothers and the Perfilyevs at home. Mitenka made me sad, Seryozha made me happy. Got a letter from Nekrasov; he’s dissatisfied with Notes of a Billiard Marker. […]

16, 17, 18 February‚ Moscow    Don’t remember anything except that I reached Moscow. I’m physically and morally in disarray, and have spent too much money. […]

14 March 1854, Bucharest13    I’m beginning my diary in a new exercise book after nearly a month’s interval, during which I’ve felt and experienced so much that I haven’t had time to think, still less to make notes. From the Caucasus I went to Tula, saw my aunts, my sister and Valeryan, and learned of my promotion. All my three brothers and the Perfilyevs came to see me and took me off to Moscow. From Moscow I went to Pokrovskoye and said farewell there to my aunt Pelageya Ilinichna, Valeryan, Masha and Seryozha. These two farewells – especially the latter – were among the happiest moments of my life. From there I went to see Mitenka who, chiefly on my advice, has left Moscow, and the day before yesterday I arrived in Bucharest via Poltava, Kishinyov, etc. I have been happy all this time!

My official position here is uncertain and for the past week or so my health has been suspect again. Can this be the start of a new period of ordeals for me?

However, I myself am to blame; good fortune has spoiled me. I’ve let myself go and have much to reproach myself with from the day of my departure from Kursk right up to the present moment. It’s sad to have to believe that I’ve been as unable to bear good fortune as I was to bear misfortune. Today I’ll go to corps headquarters to see the commander of the division, make a few purchases, have a bit of a walk and go home to write letters and have dinner. After dinner I’ll do some work and towards evening go to the baths. In the evening I’ll stay at home and get on with Boyhood.

15 June    Exactly three months’ interval. Three months of idleness and a life which I can’t be satisfied with. I spent about three weeks with Scheidemann14 and regret that I didn’t stay. I would have got on with the officers and could have come to terms with the battery commander. Moreover the bad company and my latent resentment at my undistinguished position would have had a good effect on me. I would have been angry and bored, would have tried to raise myself morally above the position I was in, and would have become better – I would have worked.

My posting to the Staff15 came just at the time when I had quarrelled with the battery commander, and it flattered my vanity. My illness, during which I couldn’t even get back into my old rut of activity and honest work with goodness as its only aim, proved to me how far I had degenerated. The higher I rise in public opinion, the lower I fall in my own. I’ve had several women, told lies, boasted, and – most dreadful thing of all – I didn’t behave under fire in the way I hoped I would.

The siege of Silistria has been raised;16 I haven’t yet been in action; my position among my comrades and my superiors is good; despite the after effects of …17 and the sores my health is reasonably good, and morally speaking I have firmly resolved to devote my life to the service of my neighbour. For the last time I say to myself: ‘If three days pass without my doing anything of service to others, I shall kill myself.’

Help me, Lord.

Before dinner I’ll write letters to Seryozha and my aunts and to Volkonskaya if I have time. After dinner I’ll continue Notes of a Bombardier.

23 June    During the move from Silistria to Maia18 I went to Bucharest. I gambled and was obliged to borrow money. The position is humiliating for anyone, but especially for me. Wrote letters to my aunt, Mitya, Nekrasov and Oska.19 I still don’t know what to settle down to, and therefore I’m doing nothing. It seems it would be best to work on The Novel of a Russian Landowner.

24 June    Sat down to work in the morning, but did nothing, and was glad when Gorchakov20 came to interrupt me. After dinner at the General’s21 I read Béranger, went to the doctor who told me I would have to undergo an operation and have treatment for six weeks or so, and chatted till night fall with Shubin22 about our Russian serfdom. It’s true that serfdom is an evil but an extraordinarily nice evil.

25, 26, 27, 28, 29 June    Put off my operation from day to day waiting for a move to Bucharest, and have put it off here, waiting for lodgings and a doctor. There’s been action at Giurgevo23 in which I might have taken part if I’d been well. I’ve got no money, not a bean, and I’m in debt. […]

30 June    Was operated on today under chloroform – was a coward. Did nothing because I couldn’t. There’s hope that I’ll recover.

3 July    Read the whole day; my work simply refuses to make progress. Chatted with Prushinsky, Olkhin and Andropov in the evening. Stupidly lost Polinka’s24 portefeuille to Prushinsky and, despite his protestations, gave it to him. As soon as I’m on my own and think hard about myself, I can’t help going back to my original idea – that of self-improvement; but my chief mistake, and the reason why I wasn’t able to go quietly along that road, was that I confused self-improvement with perfection. One must first of all get a proper understanding of oneself and one’s defects and try to remedy them, and not set oneself the aim of perfection, which is not only impossible to attain from the low point at which I stand, but the mere conception of which destroys the hope of the possibility of attaining it. It’s the same as it was with my estate, my studies, literature and life. With my estate I wanted to attain perfection and forgot that it was necessary first of all to remedy the imperfections, of which there were too many; I wanted to make a correct division of my fields when I had nothing to manure or sow them with.

I must take myself as I am, and try to remedy those defects which can be remedied, and my good nature will lead me on towards the good without a notebook, which has been my nightmare for so long. Mine is one of those characters which desire, seek out and are receptive to all that is beautiful, and which for that very reason are incapable of being consistently good.

4 July    My chief defects are: (1) Superficiality (by which I mean irresolution, lack of perseverance and inconsistency). (2) An unpleasant, difficult character – irritability, excessive self-love and vanity. (3) The habit of idleness. […]

5 July    Read during tea, dinner and dessert, and spent all morning writing a single letter to my aunt, which I’ll send despite the fact that I don’t at all like the French style of it.25 From day to day it becomes more diffficult for me to express myself and to write in French; what need is there for this stupid custom of writing and speaking in a language one knows badly? And how much trouble, waste of time, obscurity of thought and imperfection in one’s native language result from this custom, and yet it has to be so!

In the evening I wrote a chapter or so of Notes of a Bombardier enthusiastically and reasonably well. Olkhin came to see me twice, which it’s completely unnecessary for me to note down, because I shan’t remember the wonderful expressions of stupidity which issued from his lips just because I note them down. Ate some fruit, despite my diarrhoea, and commissioned Olkhin to hire a piano for me – two breaches of good sense. My main defect is a lack of tolerance towards myself and others. This isn’t a rule but a thought, but there’s no reason why I shouldn’t note it down here. It will remind me some time hence of the moral state I was in on 5 July, 1854.

6 July    Spent all day reading Lermontov, Goethe and Alphonse Karr26 and couldn’t settle down to work. However often I say that I’m not ambitious, and however much I try to be sincere about it, le bout de l’oreille se montre malgré moi [the cloven hoof shows in spite of me]. It was unpleasant for me to learn today that Osip Serzhputovsky had been shell-shocked and that the Emperor had been informed about it. Envy … and over such a trivial thing, and of such a worthless fellow! […]

7 July    I lack modesty! That’s my great defect. What am I? One of four sons of a retired lieutenant-colonel, left an orphan at seven years of age in the care of women and strangers, having received neither a social nor an academic education and becoming my own master at the age of seventeen, without a large fortune, without any social position, and, above all, without any principles; a man who mismanaged his affairs to the last degree, who spent the best years of his life without purpose or pleasure, and who finally banished himself to the Caucasus to escape from his debts and above all his habits, and from there, by seizing on to connections which had existed between his father and the Commander-in-Chief of the army, was transferred to the army of the Danube at the age of twenty-six as an ensign, almost without means except his pay (because what means he has he must use to pay his outstanding debts), without patrons, without the ability to live in society, without knowledge of the service, without practical talents – but with enormous self-love! Yes, that is my social position. Let us see what sort of person I am.

I am ugly, awkward, untidy and socially uneducated. I am irritable, boring to other people, immodest, intolerant (intolérant) and bashful as a child. I am almost an ignoramus. What I know, I have somehow learned myself in snatches, piecemeal, unsystematically, and it amounts to very little. I am intemperate, irresolute, inconstant, stupidly vain and passionate like all people who lack character. I am not brave. I am unmethodical in life, and so lazy that idleness has become for me almost an insuperable habit. I am intelligent, but my intelligence has never yet been thoroughly tested by anything. I have neither practical, social nor business intelligence. I am honest, i.e. I love goodness and have made a habit of loving it; and when I deviate from it I am dissatisfied with myself and return to it with pleasure; but there are things which I love more than goodness – for example, fame. I am so ambitious, and this feeling has been so little satisfied, that as, between fame and virtue, I fear I might often choose the former if I had to make a choice.

Yes, I am not modest; and that is why I am proud at heart, but bashful and shy in society.

Wrote this page in the morning and read Louis Philippe.27 Began writing Notes of a Bombardier very late after dinner, and by evening had written quite a lot, despite the fact that Olkhin and Andropov came round to see me. After Andropov left I leaned on the balcony rail and gazed at my favourite street lamp which shines so wonderfully through the tree. Moreover, after the few storm clouds which had passed over and moistened the ground today, one large cloud remained covering the whole southern part of the sky, and there was a pleasant lightness and moisture in the air.

The landlady’s pretty daughter was reclining at her window, leaning like me on her elbows. A barrel-organ passed along the street, and when the sounds of a good old waltz receding further and further into the distance had completely died away, the girl gave a deep sigh, got up and quickly moved away from the window. I felt so sad, yet happy, that I couldn’t help smiling and long continued to look at my street lamp, whose light was sometimes obscured by the branches of the tree swaying in the wind, and at the tree itself, the fence and the sky, and all these things seemed to me even better than before. […]

8 July    In the morning I read and wrote a little. In the evening I did a bit more, but not only without enthusiasm, but even with a sort of insuperable laziness. Decided not to take the piano and replied to Olkhin that I had no money, at which he was no doubt offended, the more so since I signed myself simply ‘Entirely Yours’. Today I discovered still more poetic things in Lermontov and Pushkin: in the former The Dying Gladiator (that dream of home before he dies is wonderfully good) and in the latter, Yanko Marnavich,28 who accidently killed his friend. Having prayed long and earnestly in church he went home and lay down on his bed. Then he asked his wife whether she had seen anything from the window, and she replied that she hadn’t. He asked again, and then his wife said that she saw a light beyond the river. When he asked a third time, his wife said that she saw the light getting bigger and coming nearer. He died. It’s marvellous! But why? Try and explain poetic feeling after that!

9 July    Spent the morning and all the rest of the day, first writing Notes of a Bombardier which, by the way, I’ve finished, but which I’m so dissatisfied with that I can hardly avoid re-writing it all afresh or entirely abandoning it – abandoning not only Notes of a Bombardier, but abandoning literature altogether – because if a thing which seemed admirable as an idea turns out to be worthless in practice, the man who undertook it has no talent; and then reading Goethe, Lermontov and Pushkin. The first I don’t understand well and, however much I try, I can’t avoid seeing something ridiculous (du ridicule) in the German language. In the second, I found the beginning of Izmail Bey very good. Perhaps it seemed all the more so to me because I’m beginning to love the Caucasus with a deep, though posthumous love. That wild region in which two such completely opposite things as war and freedom are so strangely and poetically blended is really fine. In Pushkin I was struck by The Gipsies which, strangely enough, I hadn’t understood till now.

The motto of my diary should be ‘non ad probandum, sed ad narrandum’ [not to prove, but to narrate].

11 July    Re-read A Hero of Our Time, read Goethe, and only wrote a very little towards evening. Why? Laziness, irresolution, and a passion for looking at my moustaches and my fistulas – for which I give myself two reprimands. Today I entrusted my application for a transfer29 to Boborykin, who was here on his way to see the General. Another reprimand for having laughed at Olkhin in front of Boborykin.

11 July    In the morning Olkhin came to announce to me that he was going to Leovo and wanted to entrust his horses and belongings to me – which I got out of unwittingly by telling him that I had no money. In actual fact I’m in a most difficult financial position again: not a copeck at least till the middle of August, nothing in prospect from anywhere except for forage-money, and in debt to the doctor. Nothing in prospect, I say, because I received The Contemporary today and am convinced that my manuscripts are lying at the customs somewhere.30 I’ll sort this matter out when I’m well again. In the evening I had the chance to test my illusions about a return to the gay life. My landlady’s very pretty married daughter who has been foolishly flirting with me beyond all bounds had the same effect on me- however much I tried to force myself – as in the old days, i.e. I suffered terribly from bashfulness.

In the course of conversation with the doctor today, the stupid and unjust opinion I used to have about the Wallachians vanished – an opinion common to the whole army and borrowed by me from the fools I have hitherto kept company with. This people’s fate is sad and moving. Today I read Goethe and a play of Lermontov’s31 (in which I discovered much that was new and good) and Dickens’ Bleak House.32 This is the second day I’ve been trying to write poetry. We’ll see what comes of it. […]

12 July    Since morning I’ve felt heavy-headed and couldn’t force myself to work. Read The Contemporary all day. Esther (Bleak House) says that her prayer as a child consisted of the promises she had made to God (1) always to be industrious, (2) to be sincere, (3) to be contented and (4) to try to win the love of all around her. How simple, how sweet, how easy to accomplish and how great are those four rules.

13 July    My prayer. ‘I belive in one, almighty and good God, in the immortality of the soul, and in eternal retribution for our deeds; I wish to believe in the religion of my fathers and I respect it.’

‘Our Father’, etc. ‘For the repose and salvation of my parents.’ ‘I thank Thee, O Lord, for Thy mercies, for this and for that’ (here recall all the happiness that has been my lot). ‘I pray Thee, inspire me to good undertakings and thoughts, and grant me happiness and success in them. Help me to correct my faults; save me from sickness, suffering, quarrels, debts and humiliations.’

‘Grant me to live and die in firm faith and hope in Thee, in love for others and from others, with a clear conscience, and with profit to my neighbour. Grant me to do good and shun evil: but whether good or evil befall me, may They holy will be done!’ […]

14 July    In the morning, apart from my usual reading of Goethe and some booklets that turned up, I got Zhdanov down on paper, but still haven’t decided about the personality of Velenchuk.33 They operated on my groin again today and again I had choloroform. The sensation wasn’t so unpleasant, but it was so strange – I heard the sound of the instruments, but didn’t feel pain. […]

15 July    The doctor woke me up early today, and thanks to that I wrote quite a lot in the morning – I kept revising the old material: the description of the soldiers. I also wrote a bit in the evening and read Verschwörung des Fiesko.34 I’m beginning to understand drama in general. Although I take a completely opposite path to the majority as far as it’s concerned, I like it as a means of providing me with new poetic enjoyment. […]

16 July    […] Bartolomey35 came round later, and I probably offended him a bit by saying that his pronunciation is bad. It’s time I stopped keeping company with the young, although I never did so really and truly, like the others; but the thing is that it’s now easier and more pleasant for me to be with old men than with very young people. […]

21 July, Sineşti36    Was woken up early this morning and taken to Sineşti. […] Forgot to note down yesterday the pleasure Schiller gave me with his Rudolf of Habsburg and some minor philosophical poems. The simplicity, picturesqueness and calm, truthful poetry of the former is delightful. In the second, what struck me – or as Bartolomey says, what ‘was inscribed on my heart’ – was the thought that to do anything great, one must direct all the strength of one’s soul to a single point.

24 July, Cureşti    In the morning Noverezhky, with a wry face, brought me back my application37 endorsed by Kryzhanovsky. All these petty unpleasantnesses have so upset me that I was decidedly out of sorts all day – lazy, apathetic, unable to set to work on anything, taciturn with people and bashful to the point of perspiration. I experienced this at Boborykin’s, first with Zybin, Friede and Balyuzek, and in the evening with Kryzhanovsky and Stolypin. I’m too honest to have dealings with these people.

It’s strange that I’ve only just noticed one of my chief defects: an inclination to show off all my superior qualities, which offends other people and arouses envy in them. In order to win people’s love one must, on the contrary, conceal everything in which one stands out from the rank and file. I’ve come to realise this too late. I won’t hand in my application until I’m in a position to keep horses, and I’ll employ all means to that end. Meanwhile I won’t have any other relations with people, except those required by the service. I reproach myself for laziness.

27 July    Spent the whole day here and saw no one except Tishkevich and the adjutants who all, it seems to me, try to avoid me as a disgracié. It’s absurd. I’m satisfied with my day except for my laziness and the two wenches at my landlady’s to whom I couldn’t resolve to say a word, and I walked around the house for two hours. Some thoughts came into my head, but I feel that my memory is becoming blunted; love and respect for, and confidence in my intelligence are disappearing, and I’m falling back in the world of ideas without in consequence making progress – as should be the case – in the practical world. One of the thoughts apropos of which this reflection came into my head was actually this – that to try to win the love of one’s neighbour is useless. […]

29 July    My improvement is progressing admirably. I feel how my relations with people of every sort are becoming easy and pleasant since I decided to be modest and became convinced that there is absolutely no need always to appear grand and infallible. I am very cheerful. God grant that my cheerfulness stems from me myself, as I think it does: from my desire to be pleasant to everyone, from modesty, slowness to take offence and being on guard against angry outbursts. If so I would always be cheerful and nearly always happy. In the morning I decided to stay at home and work, but I couldn’t get on with things and in the evening I couldn’t refrain from going out and gadding about. On the way back from supper Tishkevich and I stopped at a brothel and Kryzhanovsky caught us, which, I must confess, wasn’t at all pleasant. […]

1 August    Got up late and read Schiller all morning, but without pleasure or enthusiasm. After dinner, although I was in the mood to work, I wrote very little out of laziness. Spent all evening chasing after wenches. […]

12 Augusty Foksaný38    Began the morning well and did some work, but the evening! God, shall I never reform? Lost the rest of my money and lost three thousand roubles which I couldn’t pay. I’ll sell my horse tomorrow. […]

13 August    Woke up fairly early and worked well in the morning, but after dinner – apart from the excellent comedy Among Friends One Always Comes to Terms39 – I loafed about all evening. […]

15 August    Got up early and rode to Odobeşti.40 The journey was somehow not a success. Wrote little and very badly,41 slept, went to the races and spent the evening at home. I repeat what I’ve written before: I have three main defects: (1) lack of character, (2) irritability and (3) laziness, of which I must cure myself. […]

16 August    Got up about 7, wrote quite well but not much, had dinner, wrote a bit more, ran after a wench, stayed a while at Stolypin’s, then had a repulsive argument about original sin and so am going to bed in a bad mood. In the morning I shouted at Nikita – irritability. (1) Was lazy in Andropov’s presence. (2) Ran after a wench when I’d promised myself not to embrace anyone for at least a month, and then only for love – lack of character. (3) Argued heatedly – irritability. (4) Sum total: irritability, lack of character and laziness. The most important thing in life for me is to cure myself of these faults. From today I shall conclude my diary each day with this phrase.

17 August, Tecuciu42    March from Fokşaný to Tecuciu; […] Had a good sleep at mid-day and read the wonderful comedy Poverty is no Crime43 […]

24 August    Rest day in Aslui.44 Today I experienced two strong, pleasant and profitable impressions. (1) Received a flattering letter about Boyhood from Nekrasov, which, as usual, raised my spirits and encouraged me to continue my work, and (2) read Z. T.45 How strange that I’ve only now become convinced that the higher you try to make yourself out to be to people, the lower you become in their opinion. La béquille de Sixte-Quint doit être le bâton de voyage de tout homme supérieur. [Sixtus V’s crutch should be the travelling staff of any superior being.]46 All truths are paradoxes. The direct deductions of reason are fallible; the absurd conclusions of experience are infallible. Today I censured Stolypin, was proud to get Nekrasov’s letter and was lazy. The most important thing for me is to cure myself of lack of character, irritability and laziness.

29 August    I’m very ill. I think it’s consumption. I’ve written nothing, but read Onkel Tom’s Hütte. The most important thing for me is to cure myself of laziness, irritability and lack of character.

11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 September, Kishinyov47    […] The disembarkation near Sevastopol worries me.48 Self-assurance and effeminacy: these are the main, sad features of our army – common to all armies of states that are too big and strong. Must cure myself of laziness, irritability and lack of character.

Received Childhood and The Raid.49 Found much that is weak in the former. The temporary – in the present circumstances – aim of my life is to improve my character, put my affairs in order and make a career both in literature and in the service.

17 September    Behaved badly. Did nothing, ran after wenches in the evening, went out contrary to my intention. The plan to form a society interests me keenly.50 Must cure myself of laziness, lack of character and irritability.

23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 September, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 October    The plan to form a society has changed into a plan for a journal51 – for most of the seven – but not for Friede and me. I’m not going away on account of the journal, but it’s making slow progress; I do little work and behave badly. Tomorrow the Grand Dukes are coming.52 Let that be a great occasion for me. I must write an article for the specimen number. […]

21 October    I’ve lived through a lot these last days. Affairs at Sevastopol still hang by a thread. The specimen number will be ready today, and I’m thinking again of moving. Stolypin, Serzhputovsky, Shubin and Boborykin are going or have gone. I’ve lost all my money at cards. […]

2 November, Odessa53    Since the landing of the Anglo-French troops we have had three engagements with them. The first was at Alma on 8 September in which the enemy attacked and defeated us; the second was Liprandi’s action on 13 September in which we attacked and were victorious, and the third was Dannenberg’s terrible action in which we attacked again and were beaten again. It was a treacherous, revolting business. The 10th and 11th divisions attacked the enemy’s left flank, drove them back and spiked thirty-seven guns. Then the enemy put forward 6,000 riflemen – only 6,000 against 30,000 – and we retreated, having lost about 6,000 brave men. And we had to retreat, because half our troops had no artillery owing to the roads being impassable, and – God knows why – there were no rifle battalions. Terrible slaughter! It will weigh heavy on the souls of many people! Lord, forgive them. The news of this action has produced a sensation. I’ve seen old men who wept aloud and young men who swore to kill Dannenberg. Great is the moral strength of the Russian people. Many political truths will emerge and evolve in the present difficult days for Russia. The feeling of ardent patriotism that has arisen and issued forth from Russia’s misfortunes will long leave its traces on her. These people who are now sacrificing their lives will be citizens of Russia and will not forget their sacrifice. They will take part in public affairs with dignity and pride, and the enthusiasm aroused in them by the war will stamp on them for ever the quality of self-sacrifice and nobility.

Among the useless sacrifices of that unfortunate action were Soymonov and Komstadius, who were killed. It is said of the first that he was one of the few honest and intelligent generals in the Russian army. The second I knew quite well: he was a member of our society and a would-be editor of our journal. His death more than anything else has impelled me to ask to go to Sevastopol. He made me feel somehow ashamed.

English ships continue to blockade Odessa. The sea, unfortunately, is calm. It is said that there was an action on the 27th – again indecisive – and that on the 3rd there will be an assault. I can’t get there before the 5th, but I have a feeling that I still won’t be too late.

3 November    In Odessa I was told of a touching incident. The adjutant to the general in charge went to the hospital at N, where the wounded men of the 4th corps from the Crimea were lying. ‘The Commander-in-Chief Prince Gorchakov’, he said to them, ‘has instructed me to thank you for your brave service and to find out …’ – ‘Hurrah!’ resounded feeble voices, one after another, from all the beds. A great and wonderful reward for Gorchakov for his efforts! Better than a portrait round the neck.54

The pilot on the ferry-boat at Nikolayev told me that on the 26th there had been an action in which Khomutov distinguished himself and allegedly captured a great number of prisoners and guns, but that of our 8,000 men only 2,000 returned on the 26th. An officer in Nikolayev confirmed these rumours. Nakhimov and Liprandi are said to have been wounded. The enemy have received reinforcements and are settling down in winter quarters. God knows what is true. The pilot also told me a story about a Cossack who caught a young English prince with a lassoo and took him to Menshikov. The young prince fired his pistol at the Cossack. ‘Hey, don’t shoot,’ said the Cossack. The prince fired again and again missed. ‘Hey, don’t fool about,’ said the Cossack. The prince fired a third time (these things are always done three times) and missed. Then the Cossack began to flog him with his whip. When the prince complained to Menshikov that the Cossack had beaten him, the Cossack said that he was teaching him to shoot: if he were a commander and couldn’t shoot straight, the Cossacks would disown him. Menshikov laughed. Generally speaking one hears more talk among the people about the English than about the French.

4, 5 November    (en route from Odessa to Sevastopol) In Nikolayev I couldn’t see a thing. I won’t write down the rumours because they all turned out to be nonsense. Since the 24th nothing has been undertaken except siege works.

I was taken by boat from Kherson to Oleshko. The pilot told us about the transport of the soldiers: how a soldier lay down in the pouring rain on the wet bottom of the boat and fell asleep; how an officer beat a soldier for scratching himself; and how a soldier shot himself during the crossing for fear of having overstayed his leave by two days and how he was thrown overboard without burial. Now the boatmen try to frighten one another as they pass the place on the river where the soldier was thrown overboard. ‘What was his company?’ they shout.

At Oleshko I was detained for the night by a pretty and intelligent Cossack girl whom I kissed and fondled through a window. She came to me during the night. […]55 I would have pleasanter memories if I had stayed at the window. […]

Saw some French and English prisoners but didn’t manage to talk to them. The mere appearance of these people and the way they walk somehow filled me with the sad conviction that they are far superior to our troops. However, I only had for comparison some army transport men who were escorting them.

The driver who brought me here said that on the 24th we should have completely overcome the English had it not been for treachery.56 It’s sad and ridiculous. ‘The other day’, he said, ‘they brought an iron coach and six, probably meant for Menshikov.’ I also met some of our own wounded, a splendid lot; they are sorry for their commanders and say that they advanced to attack several times but couldn’t hold on because their left flank had been turned; they are glad to seize on to an unknown, and therefore for them very significant word, in order to explain their failure. It would be too sad for them to believe in treachery.

11 November, Sevastopol    I arrived on the 7th. All the rumours that tormented me on the way have proved to be nonsense. I’m attached to the 3rd light battery and live in the town itself. I’ve seen all our fortifications from a distance, and some nearby. To take Sevastopol is quite impossible – even the enemy are convinced of that, it seems – and in my opinion they are covering their retreat. The storm on 2 November put up to thirty vessels out of action – a sailing ship and three steamers. The company of the artillery officers in this brigade is the same as everywhere else. There is one person, very like Louisa Volkonskaya – I know that I’ll soon get tired of him and so I try to see him as little as possible so that that impression will last longer. Of the commanders here, Nakhimov, Totleben and Istomin appear to be decent people. Menshikov seems to me to be a good commander-in-chief, but unfortunately he began his military career with inferior forces against an enemy three times as strong and better armed. The troops on both sides had never been under fire, and so the numerical superiority was ten times more noticeable. Troops who have never been under fire can’t retreat; they run away.

20 November

When shall I cease at last to lead a life without purpose or passion, or to feel a deep wound in my heart and know no means of healing it? God alone knows who inflicted this wound, but from birth I’ve been tormented by the bitter pledge of future nothingness, by wearisome grief and doubt.57

Simferopol

23 November, Eski-Orda58    On the 16th I left Sevastopol for our position. On the journey I became more convinced than before that Russia must either fall or be completely transformed. Everything is topsy-turvy. The enemy are not prevented from reinforcing their camps, although this would have been very easy, while we, with inferior forces, with no expectation of help from anywhere, with generals like Gorchakov who have lost their senses and feelings and energy and without reinforcing ourselves stand facing the enemy and wait for the storms and bad weather which Nicholas the Miracle-Worker will send to drive the enemy away. The Cossacks want to plunder but not to fight; the hussars and uhlans suppose military worth to consist of drunkenness and debauchery, and the infantry – of robbery and making money. A sad state of affairs for the army and the country.

I spent a couple of hours chatting with French and English wounded. Every soldier is proud of his position and respects himself, for he feels himself to be an effective spring in the army machine. Good weapons and the skill to use them, youth, and general ideas about politics and the arts give them an awareness of their own worth. With us, stupid foot and arms drills, useless weapons, oppression, age, lack of education, and bad food and keep destroy the men’s last spark of pride, and even give them too high an opinion of the enemy.

In Simferopol I lost all my money at cards, and I’m now living with the battery in a Tatar village and only now experiencing the discomforts of life.

26 November    I’m living a carefree life, not forcing or restraining myself in anything; I go out shooting, listen, observe and argue. One thing is bad: I’m beginning to put myself, or to wish to put myself, above my comrades and they no longer like me so much. Here is some almost reliable news from Sevastopol. On the 13th there was a sortie against the enemy trenches opposite the 3rd, 4th and 5th bastions. The Yekaterinburg regiment took the trench opposite the 4th bastion by surprise, drove out and killed the enemy and withdrew with the loss of three men wounded. The officer commanding that detachment was presented to the Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolayevich. ‘So you were the hero of this action?’ the Grand Duke said to him. ‘Tell me what it was like.’ ‘When I left the bastion and began to approach the trench, the soldiers stopped and didn’t want to go on.’ ‘You can’t mean it,’ said the Grand Duke and walked away from him. ‘You ought to be ashamed,’ remarked Filosofov to him. ‘Clear off!’ concluded Menshikov. I’m sure the officer wasn’t lying, and I’m sorry he wasn’t more outspoken.

The sortie from the 3rd bastion was unsuccessful. The officer, on seeing the sentries, returned to the Admiral for instructions and gave the enemy time to prepare. I don’t know any details about the sortie from the 5th bastion. On the whole this news is not entirely trustworthy, but it’s more probable than the wild rumours about the capture of some thirty guns.

Liprandi has been appointed commander of the troops in Sevastopol. Thank God! Apart from the successes he has had in this campaign, he is well loved and popular – popular not for his foul language, but for his efficiency and intelligence. For good or ill, but to my great annoyance, lack of money keeps me here; otherwise I would now be on the south coast at Eupatoria or would have returned to Sevastopol.

7 December    On the 5th I went to Sevastopol with a platoon of soldiers to fetch some guns. There is much new. And all of it encouraging. Saken’s presence is apparent in everything. And not so much Saken’s presence as the presence of a new commander-in-chief who isn’t tired out, doesn’t change his mind too much and isn’t yet the prisoner of conjectures and expectations. Saken, as far as he can, spurs on his troops to make sorties (I say as far as he can, for only Menshikov can really spur them on by giving them immediate rewards – which he fails to do). Recommendations which come out three months later really mean nothing to a man awaiting death at any moment. But man is so foolishly constituted that while awaiting death he expects and loves rewards. Saken has built little trenches in front of the bastion. God knows whether it’s a good plan or not, but it shows energy. It is said that one such little trench of eight men has been captured [?],59 but the main thing is that to fetch the wounded from a trench during the day, others have to risk being wounded. These trenches are not connected with the bastions, and are further away from them than they are from the enemy’s works. Saken has organised a system for removing the wounded and has set up ambulance stations at all the bastions. Saken has had music played.

It’s wonderful how beautiful Sevastopol is. Two days ago I was extremely sad. I spent a couple of hours in a hospital ward for the allied wounded. Most of them had been struck off – dead or recovered – but the rest were convalescing. I found some five of them round an iron stove. French, English and Russians were laughing, chatting and playing cards, each one speaking his own language, and only the warders spoke some kind of strange jargon in their attempt to accommodate themselves to the foreign languages. […] When I went down to the shore the sun was already setting behind the English batteries, puffs of smoke were rising here and there and shots could be heard, the sea was calm and small boats and dinghies were scudding past the huge masses of ships; on the Grafskaya pier music was playing, and the sounds of trumpets and a familiar tune drifted across; Golitsyn and some other gentlemen were standing by the embankment leaning on the rails. It was wonderful! […]

It seems I shall soon be leaving. I can’t say whether I want to or not.

Notes

1 The third chapter of the first version of The Novel of a Russian Landowner.

2 I have used the French word in preference to the more usual, but misleading, Invalid, or the cumbersome Disabled Soldier. The Russian Invalide was an army newspaper founded in 1813 and continuing right up to 1917.

3 A small town on the Danube in Romania; at the time the focal point of military operations between the Turkish and Russian armies.

4 To No. 4 battery of the 12th artillery brigade of the Danube Army. This brigade was part of General Liprandi’s detachment which was besieging the Turkish fortified positions at Kalafat.

5 Namely to review on Saturdays everything done during that week.

6 A village on the left bank of the Terek north east of Groznaya, where Tolstoy stopped on his journey back to Yasnaya Polyana.

7 Not all these alterations were made.

8 The story based on that incident was written two years later.

9 To the rank of ensign for distinguished services in the campaign against the mountain tribesmen.

10 Prince Cherkassky committed suicide because of gambling losses; Tolstoy’s university contemporary, Neratov, for reasons unknown. Both were landowners in the province of Tula.

11 The will Tolstoy wrote before setting off for the war has not survived.

12 Mlle J. Vergani, a French governess – at first to Tolstoy’s sister, and in the 1850s to the Arsenyev family.

13 Tolstoy arrived in Bucharest on 12 March to await a posting.

14 The commander of No. 3 battery of the artillery brigade to which Tolstoy was attached, and who had occasion to reprimand Tolstoy for prolonging his stay in Bucharest – hence the reference to ‘coming to terms with the battery commander’.

15 After a short spell of service with the artillery brigade Tolstoy was transferred on 13 April to the staff of General Serzhputovsky, Commander of the Artillery of the Danube Army.

16 A Turkish stronghold on the right bank of the Danube which had been besieged by the Russians for several weeks.

17 The word has been deleted but is not difficult to guess.

18 A village to the north east of Bucharest where the Russian troops withdrew to after raising the siege of Silistria.

19 The son of General Serzhputovsky.

20 One of the two nephews of the Commander-in-Chief of the Danube Army.

21 General Serzhputovsky.

22 One of a small group of officers, including Tolstoy, who later planned to found a society and a journal to promote the spread of education among the troops. See entry for 17 September 1854.

23 An attempt by the Turks to force a crossing of the Danube at Giurgevo, on the left bank, was successfully resisted by the Russians.

24 The wife of V. S. Perfilyev and a second cousin of Tolstoy’s.

25 Letters, I, 39.

26 Referred to as ‘a witty writer’ in a draft version of Childhood, the French novelist is also mentioned in Boyhood and After the Ball.

27 Probably Dumas père’s Histoire de la vie politique et privée de Louis Philippe, 1852.

28 The second of the Songs of the Western Slavs.

29 To the Crimean Army.

30 The manuscripts of Boyhood and Notes of a Billiard Marker, which Tolstoy feared had been held up in transit from Romania.

31 Masquerade.

32 It was serialised in translation in The Contemporary in 1854.

33 Two soldiers portrayed in The Wood-felling.

34 A drama by Schiller. Tolstoy mistakenly wrote Viesko.

35 Evidently a young soldier who came to Tolstoy for advice on literature; reference is made elsewhere to their reading stories together.

36 Sineşti is to the north east of Bucharest; Cureşti (see entry for 24 July) has not been identified and is probably an error on Tolstoy’s part.

37 For a transfer to the Crimea.

38 A town in Moldavia on the borders of Wallachia.

39 By Ostrovsky.

40 A village to the west of Fokşaný, noted for its vineyards.

41 The Wood-felling.

42 A town about fifteen miles north east of Fokşaný.

43 By Ostrovsky.

44 Evidently a mistake for Vaslui, a town in Moldavia.

45 These initials have not been deciphered.

46 A reference to a saying about Pope Sixtus V who allegedly feigned illness before his election as Pope, but rapidly recovered and threw away his crutches soon afterwards.

47 Tolstoy reached Kishinyov on 9 September.

48 A reference to the landing of English, French and Turkish forces near Eupatoria in the Crimea on 2 September.

49 Offprints of his stories.

50 See Note 22.

51 Tolstoy and Friede were at first reluctant to give up the plan to found a society, but eventually agreed to collaborate with the other five in launching a journal. Tolstoy wrote an article for a specimen number, but the authorities refused permission for the journal to be published.

52 Nicholas I’s sons who had been sent to ‘raise the morale’ of the army.

53 Tolstoy left Kishinyov at the end of October and travelled to Sevastopol via Odessa, Nikolayev and Perekop.

54 A portrait of the Tsar set in diamonds; the highest possible award.

55 A passage here has been erased from the manuscript.

56 A reference to a rumour that the Commander-in-Chief Prince Menshikov had been guilty of treachery at the Battle of Inkerman.

57 A literal translation of an eight-line poem in two rhymed stanzas.

58 A Tatar village some four miles from Simferopol.

59 A conjectured reading.

1855

23 January, Position on the river Belbek1    I lived for more than a month in Eski-Orda, near Simferopol. It seemed dull, but now I look back on that life with regret. But then there’s good reason to regret the 14th brigade when you’re in the 11th. I’ve never seen a better brigade in the artillery than the former, or a worse one than the latter. Filimonov, in whose battery I am, is the dirtiest creature you could imagine. Odakhovsky, the senior officer, is a nasty mean little Pole, and the other officers are under their influence and lack a sense of direction. And I’m tied to, and even dependent on these people! I’ve been to Sevastopol, got some money, talked with Totleben, walked to the 4th bastion and played cards. I’m very dissatisfied with myself. I must go to the baths tomorrow. I must copy out my plan for the rifle battalions2 and write a memorandum.

28 January    Played shtoss for two days and nights. The result is understandable – the loss of everything – the Yasnaya Polyana house.3 I think there’s no point in writing – I’m so disgusted with myself that I’d like to forget about my existence. They say that Persia has declared war on Turkey and that peace is bound to be concluded.

3, 4, 5 February    I’ve been to Sevastopol. Showed my plan to Kashinsky. He seemed displeased. Didn’t manage to call on Krasnokutsky, who had called on me when I was out. The fleet4 has assembled; something is under way. There’s been action at Eupatoria5 – I asked to be sent there, but in vain.

6, 7, 8 February    Played cards again and lost another 200 roubles. I can’t promise to stop. I’d like to win everything back, but could get terribly embroiled. I want to win back the whole 2,000. It’s impossible, but nothing could be easier than to lose another 400, and then what? It’s terribly bad – not to mention the waste of health and time. Tomorrow I’ll ask Odakhovsky for another game and that will be the last time. Translated a ballad of Heine’s6 and read The Misfortune of Being Clever. I must write tomorrow without fail, and write a lot.

12 February    Lost seventy-five roubles again. God is still merciful to me in that there has been no unpleasantness, but what will happen later? My only hope is in Him! A bad business at Eupatoria – an attack repulsed, which is being called a reconnaissance. Time, time, youth, dreams, thoughts – everything is being lost without trace. I’m squandering my life, not living. My losses are forcing me to come to my senses a bit.

14 February    […] The thought of retirement or of the Military Academy occurs to me more and more often. I’ve written to Stolypin to try and get myself transferred to Kishinyov. From there I could arrange one of these two things.

1 March    Annenkov has been put in charge of the commissariat of both armies. Gorchakov has replaced Menshikov. Thank God! The Emperor died on 18 February and we’ve been taking the oath of allegiance to the new Emperor today. Great changes are in store for Russia. One must work hard and be brave to share in these important moments of Russia’s life.

2, 3, 4 March    These last few days I’ve twice worked for several hours at a time on my plan for reorganising the army.7 It’s making slow progress, but I’m not giving up the idea. I took communion today. Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith inspired me with a great idea, a stupendous idea, to the realisation of which I feel capable of devoting my life. This idea is the founding of a new religion appropriate to the stage of development of mankind – the religion of Christ, but purged of beliefs and mysticism, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth. I realise that this idea can only be implemented by generations of people consciously working towards this end. One generation will bequeath the idea to the next, and some day reason or fanaticism will implement it. Consciously to work towards the union of mankind by religion is the basis of the idea which I hope will absorb me.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 March    I’ve lost another 200 roubles to Odakhovsky, so that I’ve reached the ultimate extremes of embarrassment. Gorchakov has arrived with the whole Staff; I’ve been to see him and was well received, but there is no news of a transfer to the Staff, which I very much desire. I won’t ask, but I’ll wait for him to do it himself, or for my aunt to write a letter. Was weak enough to allow Stolypin to induce me to take part in a sortie,8 although I’m not only glad of it now, but regret not having gone with the assault column. In general this trip from the 9th to the 11th has been full of interesting events. Bronevsky is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. A military career is not for me, and the sooner I get out of it to devote myself fully to a literary one the better.

12 March    Wrote about a sheet of Youth in the morning, then played knucklebones and chatted with Bronevsky. We have a plan to set up a boarding-house.9 He fully shares this good idea.

13 March    Got on with Youth and wrote a letter to Tatyana Alexandrovna. The plan for the boarding-house is taking shape. I’ve failed in so many things that in order to accomplish this one I’ll work steadily, diligently and with care.

18 March    I’ve re-read the pages of my diary in which I examine myself and look for ways or methods of improvement. To start with I adopted the most logical and scientific method, but the least practicable one – that of fathoming with the aid of one’s reason the best and most useful virtues and trying to attain them. Later on I understood that virtue is only the negation of vice, for man is good, and I wanted to cure myself of vices. But there were too many of them, and reform on a spiritual basis would be possible only for a spiritual being; but man has two natures, two wills. Then I realised that gradualness is necessary for reform. But that is impossible too. One needs with the aid of one’s reason to manufacture a situation in which improvement is possible, in which the will of the flesh and the will of the spirit most nearly accord; one needs certain methods of reform. And I accidentally hit upon one such method – I discovered a standard for determining in what situations goodness is easy or difficult. In general man aspires towards the spiritual life, and to attain spiritual aims one needs a situation in which the satisfaction of the desires of the flesh does not contradict, but rather accords with desires of the spirit – ambition, love of woman, love of nature, art, and poetry.

And so my new rule, in addition to the ones I set myself long ago, is to be energetic, judicious and modest: always to be energetic in pursuit of spiritual aims, to weigh up all my actions on the basis that those are good which aspire towards spiritual aims, and to be modest, so that the pleasure of being satisfied with myself should not turn into the pleasure of exciting praise or surprise in others. I often wished also to work systematically for my own material well-being, but this aim was too diversified, and besides I made the mistake of wishing to mould it independently of circumstances. With my present rule, however, I will work for the improvement of my well-being to the extent to which it will provide me with the means for a spiritual life, and I will only work in such a way as not to run counter to circumstances. My vocation, as far as I can understand from ten years’ experience, is not practical activity, and so estate management is least of all compatible with my bent. Today the idea occurred to me of renting out my property to my brother-in-law. In that way I should attain three aims: I should free myself from the cares of estate management and the habits of my youth, impose limits on myself, and free myself of my debts. Today I wrote about a sheet of Youth.

20 March    For two days I’ve written absolutely nothing except the rough draft of a letter to Valeryan and two letters to Nekrasov. One is an answer to a letter received from him today in which he asks me to send him some articles about the war. I’ll have to write them myself. I’ll describe Sevastopol in various phases, and write an idyll of the officers’ way of life.

21 March    I’ve done nothing. Received a delightful letter from Masha in which she describes how she made Turgenev’s acquaintance.10 A dear, wonderful letter elevating me in my own opinion and rousing me to action. But I’ve been morally and physically ill all day today. On the 24th we’re going to Sevastopol.

27 March    The first day of Easter. Went to Sevastopol the day before yesterday; the trip was somehow particularly pleasant and successful. In all my comrades from the South11 I observed real pleasure at seeing me again – even in the Bashi-bazouk12 and Kryzhanovsky. Most pleasant of all for me was to read the reviews in the journals, very flattering reviews, of Notes of a Billiard-Marker.13 It’s gratifying and useful because, by inflaming my vanity, it rouses me to activity. Unfortunately I don’t yet see any sign of the latter – for five days or so I haven’t written a line of Youth, although I’ve started writing Sevastopol by Day and Night,14 and I haven’t yet got down to answering the nice letters – two from Nekrasov, and one each from Valeryan, Masha, Nikolenka and Auntie. I’ve been offered through Neverezhky the post of senior adjutant, and after some hard thinking have accepted it – I don’t know what will come of it.15 Turgenev says quite rightly that we writers need to occupy ourselves with some one thing, and I’ll be better able to occupy myself with literature in that position than in any other. I’ll suppress my vanity – my desire for promotion and crosses – very foolish vanity, especially for a man who has already found his career. I did nothing today and probably for that reason am in a strange, cold and bad-tempered frame of mind. We’re going to Sevastopol not on the 24th, but on the 1st of April.

2 April    Yesterday the battery arrived. I’m living in Sevastopol. Our losses already amount to five thousand, but we’re holding out not merely well, but in such a way that our defence must clearly prove to the enemy the impossibility of ever taking Sevastopol. Wrote two pages of Sevastopol in the evening.

3, 4, 5, 6, 7 April, morning    All these days I’ve been so occupied with what has been happening and partly with my duties that I haven’t had time yet to write anything except for one incoherent page of Youth. Since the 4th the bombardment has eased up, but it still continues. The day before yesterday I spent the night in the 4th bastion.16 From time to time a ship fires on the town. Yesterday a shell fell near a boy and a girl who were playing horses in the street: they put their arms round each other and fell down together. The girl is the daughter of a sailor’s wife. Every day she has been coming to my quarters under a hail of shells and bombs. My cold is so terrible that I can’t settle down to anything.

11 April, 4th Bastion    I’ve written very, very little of Youth or Sevastopol in recent days; my cold and feverish condition were the reason for this. Moreover, I’m irritated – especially now when I’m ill – by the fact that it doesn’t occur to anybody that I’m good for anything except chair à canon, [cannon fodder], and the most useless kind at that. I want to fall in love again with a nurse I saw at the dressing station.

12 April, 4th Bastion    Got on with Sevastopol by Day and Night and, I think, it’s not bad, and I hope to finish it tomorrow. What a wonderful spirit there is among the sailors! How much superior they are to our soldiers! My lads are a nice lot too, and I enjoy being with them. Yesterday there was another explosion at the 5th battalion: the firing seems to have increased on our side and to have decreased on theirs.

13 April    Still at the same 4th bastion, which I’m beginning to like very much. I’m writing quite a lot. Finished Sevastopol by Day and Night today, and wrote a bit of Youth. The constant charm of danger and my observations of the soldiers I’m living with, the sailors and the very methods of war are so pleasant that I don’t want to leave here, especially as I would like to be present at the assault, if there is one.

14 April    Still at the same 4th bastion, where I feel splendid. Finished a chapter of Youth yesterday, and it’s not at all bad. Generally speaking my work on Youth will lure me on now by the attraction of work begun and nearly half finished. Today I want to write the chapter ‘The Haymaking’, begin revising Sevastopol and begin the soldier’s story of how he was hit.17 O God, I thank Thee for Thy constant protection! How surely Thou leadest me to what is good. And what a worthless creature I would be if Thou were to abandon me. Abandon me not, O God! Help me on my way, not for the satisfaction of my worthless aims, but for the attainment of the great, eternal aim of existence, unknown to me but of which I am aware.

21 April    Seven days in which I’ve done absolutely nothing except for two rewritten sheets of Sevastopol and a proposed address.18 The day before yesterday we were driven out of the lodgements opposite the 5th bastion, and driven out shamefully. Morale gets lower every day, and the thought of the possibility of the capture of Sevastopol is beginning to become apparent in many ways.

19 May, Position on the river Belbek    On 15 May I was appointed commander of a mountain platoon and moved to a camp on the Belbek, twenty versts from Sevastopol. There’s a lot to do; I want to attend to the commissariat myself and I see how easy it is to steal – so easy that it’s impossible not to steal. I have many plans with regard to this thieving, but I don’t know what will come of them. The countryside is delightful, but it’s hot. I’ve done nothing all this time.

31 May    On the 26th Selenginsky, Volynsky and Kamchatsky redoubts were captured. I was in Sevastopol the next day and I’m convinced that it won’t fall. My command causes me a good deal of trouble, especially the financial accounts. I’m definitely not capable of practical activity; or if I am capable, then it’s only with a great effort, which it isn’t worth making since my career is not to be a practical one. […]

31 May    11 p.m. Finished reading Faust in the morning. […]

2 June    Got up late. Succumbed to the effect of the sores, and did nothing except for reading Henri Esmond.19 Went to see the doctor, who tried to reassure me, but didn’t succeed.

8, 9 June    Laziness, laziness. Health bad. Reading Vanity Fair all day. […]

11 June    Worked easily in the morning and with great pleasure, but started late and didn’t resume in the evening. Apart from that, I twice showed lack of character over the cauterising with lapis, and also in eating cherries. That makes three.

It’s absurd that having started writing rules at fifteen I should still be doing so at thirty, without having trusted in, or followed a single one, but still for some reason believing in them and wanting them. Rules should be moral and practical. Here are practical ones, without which there can be no happiness: moderation and acquisition. Money.

12, 13, 14, 15 June    Spent two days drilling, went to Bakhchisaray yesterday and received a letter and my article20 from Panayev. I was flattered that it has been read to the Emperor. My service in Russia is beginning to infuriate me, as it did in the Caucasus. Laziness. Vanity, telling Stolypin about my article, and irritability, hitting men at drill. My health gets worse and worse and I think salivation is starting. It’s amazing how loathsome I am, how altogether unhappy and repulsive to myself.

18 June    Finished Notes of a Cadet,21 wrote a letter and sent it off. After dinner I lazed about and read Pendennis.22 […]

24 June    I’m making it a rule when writing to draw up a programme, make a rough draft and a fair copy, but not give a final polish to each section. If you read a thing too often, you make incorrect and unfavourable judgements, the charm and interest of novelty and surprise disappear, and you often strike out what is good and only seems bad from frequent repetition. But the main thing is that with this method you retain enthusiasm for the work. Worked the whole day and can’t reproach myself with anything. Hurrah!

26 June    Finished A Spring Night;23 it doesn’t seem as good now as it did before. Can’t reproach myself with anything.

27 June, Bakhchisaray    Went to Bakhchisaray and read A Spring Night to Kovalevsky, who was very pleased with it. My pride was flattered and I was angry with Kryzhanovsky when I learned from Kovalevsky that I had been invited long ago to take part in the Brussels journal.24 […]

30 June, Position on the river Belbek. 28 June. Use of the day.    Left Bakhchisaray early in the morning, reached my lodgings, had something to eat, gave some orders, wrote a bit of the Diary and set off for Sevastopol. At Inkerman I gave some money to Yelchaninov, visited the Staff officers who are becoming more and more repulsive to me and finally reached Sevastopol. My first encounter was with a shell which burst between the Nikolayevskaya battery and the Grafskyaya pier (next day bullets were found near the library). The second was the news that Nakhimov is mortally wounded. Bronevsky, Meshchersky and Kaloshin are all nice and are fond of me. On the way back next day, 29 June, – the morning of which I spent partly in the officers’ battery and partly with Meshchersky – I came across Baron Ferzen at Inkerman and was awfully glad. I really am, I think, beginning to acquire a reputation in Petersburg. The Emperor has ordered Sevastopol in December to be translated into French. […]

5 July    I’m beginning to be very lazy. The time has only now come when my vanity is being truly tested. I could get on well in life if I were willing to write without following my convictions.

Facts: Soldiers on horseback are awfully fond of singing. Laziness, laziness, laziness.

6 July    I hope that today is the last day of the idleness in which I’ve spent the whole week. All today I’ve been reading a stupid novel by Balzac25 and have only just taken up my pen. Thoughts: Write the diary of an officer in Sevastopol26 – various aspects, phases and moments of military life – and publish it in some newspaper. I’m thinking of settling on this idea; although my chief occupation must be Youth and Early Manhood, the other would be for money, practice in style, and variety. Reproaches: (1) Laziness (2) Irritability.

8 July    Health very bad, and I can’t work. I’ve done absolutely nothing. I need to accumulate money (1) to pay my debts, (2) to redeem my estate and have the opportunity to free my peasants. I’ll copy out rules for play, but only as a means of cutting my losses when I have to play, not of winning. As for the surplus left over from my command of the unit, I’ll certainly take it and not tell anyone about it. If I’m asked, I’ll say that I took it; I know that it’s honest. […]

12 July    Wrote nothing all day, read Balzac and have been solely occupied with the new chest.27 I’ve decided that I’ll keep no government money at all. I’m even surprised how the idea could have occurred to me of even taking what was completely surplus. […]

17 July    Health worse. Did nothing. Three rules: (1) Be what I am: (a) a writer by aptitude, (b) an aristocrat by birth. (2) Never speak ill of anyone, and (3) Be economical with money.

19, 20 July    Received a letter from Panayev today. They are pleased with Notes of a Cadet and will print it in the 8th number. […]

2 August    In conversation with Stolypin today about serfdom in Russia, the idea occurred to me more clearly than ever before of writing my four stages in the history of a Russian landowner,28 with myself as the hero in Khabarovka. The main idea of the novel should be the impossibility of an educated landowner in our times living a just life while serfdom exists. All its miseries should be exposed, and the means of remedying them indicated.

7 August, Position on the river Belbek    I’ve been to Inkerman and Sevastopol. Won 100 roubles from Odakhovsky and am quits with everyone in the Crimea. Sold Mashtak.29 Was in good spirits. Decided from today to live only on my pay. I’ll play with the money I get from home, and if I lose, then nec plus ultra [at the very most] 960 roubles. All that is owed to me and all I receive will be added to the capital I’m accumulating, also what is left from the unit, also everything I win. So far there is only 200 from Rosen. I’ve behaved well.

25 August    I’ve just been looking at the sky. A wonderful night. O God, have mercy upon me. I am a bad man. Grant that I may be good and happy. Lord have mercy. The stars are in the sky. A bombardment in Sevastopol, music in the camp. I’ve done no good; on the contrary I won some money from Korsakov. I’ve been to Simferopol.

2 September    Haven’t written my diary for a week. Lost a clean 1500 roubles. Sevastopol has surrendered; I was there on my birthday. Worked well today putting my description together.30 I owe Rosen 300 roubles and lied to him.

17 September    Received news yesterday that A Night has been mutilated and published.31 It seems that the Blues32 have got their eyes on me. It’s because of my articles. But I wish Russia could always have such moral writers. I can’t be a sickly-sweet one, though, and I can’t write empty nothings, without ideas and above all without any aim. Despite a first moment of anger when I vowed never again to take up a pen, literature must be my chief and only occupation, taking precedence over all other inclinations and occupations. My aim is literary fame. And the good I can do by my works. Tomorrow I’ll go to Karalez33 and ask for my discharge, and in the morning I’ll get on with Youth. […]

19 September, Kermenchik34 I’ve moved to Kermenchik; I’m staying with a secret agent – a spy. Very interesting. As for women, there seems to be no hope. Wrote a little of Sevastopol in August. Did no good to anyone, and no evil. I need at all costs to win fame. I want to publish Youth myself. I’ll go to the south coast, get some money and apply to return home.

20 September    Lots of pretty girls, and sensuality is tormenting me. […]

21 September    I’ll come to grief if I don’t reform. Given my character, education, circumstances and abilities, there is no middle course for me – either a brilliant or a wretched future. All my strength of character must go into reform. My chief vices: (1) lack of character – non-fulfilment of plans. Means of reform: (1) to know my general aim, and (2) to think about and note down my future activities and carry them out even if they are bad. My aims: (1) the good of my neighbour and (2) organising myself in such a way as to be able to do this. At the present moment the second is more important than the first, so I must remember all the plans I’ve made, even if they are contrary to the first general aim. I must prescribe certain actions in advance, at first as few and as easy as possible, and above all ones that don’t contradict each other.

My chief aim in life is the good of my neighbour, and its conditional aims – literary fame, based on usefulness and the good of my neighbour; wealth, based on work useful to my neighbour, capital turnover and play, and all devoted towards goodness; and fame in the service, based on usefulness to the country. I’ll analyse in my diary what I’ve done each day to achieve these four aims, and how often I’ve failed to accomplish what I planned.

Tomorrow, for the first aim, I’ll write letters to my aunts and my brother Dmitry, and inquire about the men’s food, health and accommodation; for the second I’ll draft the plan of an article and write it (or else Youth) or as well as Youth; for the third I’ll do the accounts and write to my headman, and for the fourth I’ll study the locality.

23 September    Wrote a letter to Aunt Pelageya Ilinichna, gave advice and promised the Greeks help,35 which I’ll give. For the second aim I drafted the plan of Sevastopol in August; for the third, wrote to my headman; for the fourth, rode to our station. Didn’t write Youth, didn’t bother about the men and didn’t do the accounts. […]

1 October, Foti-Sala36    These last three days I’ve been constantly busy and on the move; yesterday I even fired two rounds of grape shot. Haven’t washed or undressed, and have behaved in a disorganised way. Completely forgot my aims. […]

10 October    I’ve been in a lazily apathetic, perpetually dissatisfied state for a long time now. Won another 130 roubles at cards. Bought a horse and bridle for 150. What nonsense! My career is literature – to write and write! From tomorrow I’ll work all my life or throw up everything – rules, religion, propriety – everything.

21 November    I’m in Petersburg, at Turgenev’s.37 Lost 2800 before leaving, and only just managed to transfer 600 to my debtors. Picked up 875 roubles in the country. It’s most important for me to behave myself well here. For that the main thing I need is: (1) to deal cautiously but boldly with people who can harm me, (2) to manage my expenses carefully and (3) to work. Tomorrow I’ll get on with Youth and write a bit of the diary.38

Notes

1 A position some six or seven miles from Sevastopol.

2 The plan has not survived.

3 The big house at Yasnaya Polyana in which Tolstoy was born, and which had to be sold, transferred and rebuilt elsewhere to pay Tolstoy’s gambling losses at shtoss (an old-fashioned card game).

4 The enemy fleet.

5 Prince Menshikov’s plan to take Eupatoria by storm, which was a failure.

6 It is not known which one.

7 Some draft notes have survived about the shortcomings of the Russian officers and men and the loss of morale in the Russian army.

8 An attack on the French positions near Sevastopol on the night of 10–11 March – the highlight of the ‘trip’ referred to in the next sentence.

9 Nothing came of this.

10 In October 1854. Turgenev found her very nice, attractive and intelligent.

11 Men who served with him in the Danube Army.

12 A. O. Serzhputovsky. The nickname was popularly used of HQ staff officers.

13 Especially the review by Dudyshkin in Notes of the Fatherland, No. 2, 1855.

14 The future stories Sevastopol in December and Sevastopol in May.

15 Nothing came of it, since his rank was not sufficiently senior for the appointment.

16 His first night in one of the more exposed positions in Sevastopol, where he was to remain until 15 May.

17 The incident comes in Sevastopol in December, not in a separate story.

18 A memorandum Tolstoy wrote to the Commander-in-Chief apropos of an officer’s proposed patriotic address to the defenders of Sevastopol.

19 Tolstoy’s spelling of Thackeray’s novel might suggest that he was reading it in French – although his spelling of foreign names was notoriously unreliable and he refers to it later in English as Esmond’s life. Vanity Fair in the next entry is given its English title and not translated into Russian.

20 The June issue of The Contemporary, containing Tolstoy’s story Sevastopol in December. Tolstoy frequently referred to his stories as ‘articles’.

21 The Wood-felling.

22 Here the title of Thackeray’s novel is given in Russian, and in abbreviated form.

23 Sevastopol in May.

24 The semi-official Russian journal Le Nord published in French. Tolstoy only heard indirectly, and not from his immediate superior, that he had been invited to participate.

25 Le lys dans la vallée.

26 A fragment of what may have been the start of this abandoned project has survived (An Extract from the Diary of Staff-Captain A. of the L. L. Infantry Regiment).

27 It is not clear whether this refers to the unit’s money chest, or to a new type of ammunition chest which was being designed.

28 The Novel of a Russian Landowner.

29 A horse.

30 A report for his superior officer on the final bombardment of Sevastopol.

31 Sevastopol in May.

32 The gendarmes.

33 The place on the river Belbek where the left flank of the Russian army was temporarily stationed.

34 A village near Bakhchisaray.

35 ‘Nicholas I’s legion’ consisting of local Greek volunteers, to whom Tolstoy promised artillery support.

36 A village near Bakhchisaray.

37 Tolstoy arrived in Petersburg on 21 November. He had been sent as a military courier with a report on the artillery action at Sevastopol and stayed with Turgenev, who had become acquainted with his sister and brother and to whom he had dedicated his story The Wood-felling. A plaque now marks the house on the Fontanka near the Anichkov bridge where Tolstoy shared Turgenev’s apartment.

38 Perhaps the diary referred to in Note 26.

1856–1862

The years between Tolstoy’s release from the army in 1856 and his marriage in the autumn of 1862 were difficult and unsettling ones as he sought to convince himself that he had the potential to become a great writer in spite of some evidence to the contrary. On his arrival in Petersburg he stayed first of all with Turgenev, and soon made the acquaintance of Nekrasov, Goncharov and many other established men of letters, throwing himself wholeheartedly into the life of the capital and frequenting its ‘lower depths’ no less eagerly than its more refined literary salons. The year 1856 was a remarkable one for him as a fledgling author, and saw the publication of five new stories. Sevastopol in August and Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment drew again on his Crimean experiences. A Landowner’s Morning was based on his unsuccessful project to free his Yasnaya Polyana serfs. The light-hearted, anecdotal Two Hussars entertainingly exploited the ‘fathers and sons’ theme, while The Snow-storm drew on an incident which happened to Tolstoy while returning home from the Caucasus. The year 1856 was important for personal reasons too and, as was so often the case with Tolstoy, they eventually found their reflection in his novels and stories. First his brother Dmitry, a victim of tuberculosis who had rescued a woman from a brothel and taken her to live with him, died a painful and sordid death – as Levin’s brother was later to do in Anna Karenina. Then Tolstoy’s head was turned by Valeriya Arseneva, the daughter of a neighbouring landowner, an infatuation which led to many meetings and a lengthy correspondence in which Tolstoy adopted a pedagogical rather than an amorous tone and did not conceal from his prospective fiancée the fact that she fell short of his ideal. His affections soon cooled and the relationship had ended by the beginning of 1857, but it had been important in establishing Tolstoy’s ideal of marriage in his own mind, and it provided the basis of his story Family Happiness (published in 1859).

In 1857 Tolstoy paid his first visit to Western Europe, and spent six months in France, Switzerland and Germany. Paris at first made a favourable impression on him, but after witnessing a public execution, he left hastily and in disgust for Switzerland. From Clarens on Lake Geneva he made many excursions into the mountains, and spent much time with his relation Countess Alexandra Tolstaya, for whom he cherished a deep affection and with whom he maintained a voluminous correspondence for many years. In Germany he lost heavily on the roulette table at Baden-Baden, but found time also to admire the Dresden art gallery. While abroad he worked intermittently on several stories of a topical nature, of which the tendentious and undistinguished Lucerne and Albert were published in 1857 and 1858 respectively without success.

When Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana in the late summer of 1857 he turned his attention energetically to the administration and reform of his estates. Farming and a growing interest in education were responsible for a further retreat from literature, and the school which he founded for the peasant children of Yasnaya Polyana was to occupy him on and off for the next three or four years. He published no works of fiction between 1859 and 1863, but his experience as a teacher bore fruit in his educational journal Yasnaya Polyana, of which twelve issues appeared in all, with contributions by himself, his teachers and his pupils.

As a direct result of his increasing interest in educational theory and practice, Tolstoy paid a second visit to Western Europe from July 1860 to April 1861. In Germany he studied modern educational methods and met Froebel’s nephew. He revisited France, where he was deeply moved by the death of his eldest brother Nikolay from the illness which had killed Dmitry, and which Tolstoy feared would afflict him in turn. In Paris he spent many hours travelling on omnibuses, amusing himself by observing his fellow passengers. A fortnight in Florence was made more agreeable by the presence there of Alexandra Tolstaya. In February 1861 he paid his one and only visit to England where, suffering acutely from toothache, he visited schools and museums, heard Dickens lecture on education and tried to understand Palmerston speaking in the House of Commons. In London he met Herzen and in Brussels Proudhon. On his return to Russia he resumed teaching at the Yasnaya Polyana school and was also appointed an Arbiter of the Peace. The authorities, however, viewed his educational activities with suspicion, and when the police raided his estate during his absence in 1862 and searched the premises for two days he was impelled to write a vehement and indignant letter of protest to the Emperor Alexander II himself.

Tolstoy’s personal life during the years 1856–62 was overshadowed by the deaths of two of his three brothers, the divorce of his sister and a bitter quarrel with Turgenev which narrowly avoided ending in a duel. It was also marked by a number of tentative love affairs with women of his own class, casual relationships with prostitutes and a passionate liaison with a married serf who bore him a son. In the late summer of 1862, however, he fell in love with Sofya Behrs, the daughter of a Moscow physician and of a childhood friend of Tolstoy’s, and after a very short engagement they were married in Moscow on September 1862. After his marriage Tolstoy continued his teaching for a while, but with less enthusiasm than before. For the first time after a break of three years he resumed his literary activities. He revised and published in 1863 the long unfinished story The Cossacks, conceived and born in the Caucasus in 1852 and written intermittently over the intervening period. He quickly completed Polikushka, the first of his stories to have a peasant as its central figure, and began work on the first drafts of what was to become War and Peace. With the birth in the same year of the first of his thirteen (legitimate) children, his life now took on the pattern which it was to retain until well after the completion of his longest and greatest novel.

1856

9, 10 January    I’m in Oryol. My brother Dmitry is at death’s door. How the evil thoughts I used to have about him have crumbled to dust. Masha and T. A.1 are looking after him. I dislike Valeryan again. I’m terribly depressed. I can’t do anything, but am thinking about a play.

2 February    I’m in Petersburg. My brother Dmitry is dead; I learned about it today. From tomorrow I want to spend my days in such a way that it will be pleasant to recall them. Tomorrow I’ll put my papers in order, write to Pelageya Ilinichna and to the headman, do a fair copy of The Snow-storm, have dinner at the Chess Club and go on copying The Snow-storm; in the evening I’ll call on Turgenev2 and in the morning I’ll walk for an hour. I’ve read a page of my diary, a very sensible one, where I say that I mustn’t confuse perfection with self-improvement or take a negative attitude towards the latter. […]

7 February    Quarrelled with Turgenev,3 and had a wench at my place.

10 February    Wrote little yesterday. Gymnastics takes up a great deal of time. Was stupid enough to agree to go to the theatre; went to Krayevsky’s4

11, 12 February    Finished The Snow-storm. I’m very pleased with it.

13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 February    Did nothing. Went for a walk today and enjoyed seeing the crowd round the booths and studied the character of a Russian crowd listening to a speaker. Had dinner at Turgenev’s; we’ve made it up again. Evening at Gordeyev’s – demi-monde. My girl Peyker is extremely gifted; she laughs well, but in an affected way. Another one has an excellent voice, but uses too much vibrato. Volkonskaya wants to be in love, but she thinks she wants someone to fall in love with her. Tomorrow I’ll work for six hours and promise myself not to go to sleep till I’ve done so. First I’ll write Yepishka or The Fugitive. Then the comedy,5 then Youth.

12 March    Haven’t written my diary for a long time and have been in a fog for some three weeks now. Besides, I’m unwell. The plan for my comedy wearies me. Peace has been concluded.6 I think I’ve parted with Turgenev for good.7 Sazonova came and filled me with inexpressible disgust. I’ve thought up a story, Father and Son.8

21 March    The day before yesterday I accidentally read Longinov’s letter and have sent him a challenge.9 God knows what will come of it, but I’ll be firm and resolute. On the whole this business has had a good influence on me. I’m making up my mind to go to the country, get married as soon as possible and not write any more under my own name. But the main thing is always to be cautious and reticent with everyone in conversation.

Activity, frankness, contentment with the present and the search for love. My chief mistake in life has been to let mind take the place of feeling, and to allow my supple mind to transform what conscience called bad into what it called good. […]

4 April    One of the chief evils which grow worse with time in every conceivable manifestation is belief in the past. Geological and historical revolutions are essential. Why build a house in 1856 with Grecian columns which support nothing?

19 April    I’ve finished Father and Son, even the corrections, and on Nekrasov’s advice have called it Two Hussars – that’s better. I’ve put my papers in order and want to settle down to a serious work, Punishments in the Army.10 […]

21 April    Behaved disgustingly after dinner with Nekrasov, roamed up and down the Nevsky and ended up at the baths. It’s terrible! But it’s the last time for sure. It’s not passion, it’s debauchery as a habit. I set myself the rule not to drink more than half a glass of vodka, a glass of strong wine or a tumbler of light wine.

22 April    I’m not writing anything. My attitude to the serfs is beginning to trouble me greatly. I feel the need to learn, learn and learn.

23 April    Called on Medem in the morning. Dinner at Bludov’s. Evening at Kavelin’s.11 A delightful mind and temperament. The question of the serfs is becoming clearer. I came back from his place, cheerful, hopeful and happy. I’ll go to the country with a project ready written.

25 April    Gorbunov12 came in the morning. It was pleasant for my self-esteem to see his improvement. Then we went to see Milyutin,13 who explained a lot to me, and gave me a project about serfdom which I read over dinner. Wrote down for myself a draft project and memorandum.14 Paid a pleasant visit to Turgenev. Must invite him for dinner tomorrow.

5 May    Dinner at Turgenev’s, at which I was foolishly offended by a verse of Nekrasov and said unpleasant things to everyone. Turgenev has gone. I’m sad, especially as I’m not writing anything.

8 May    Learned yesterday that my leave won’t be granted for a very long time.15  Dined at Bludov’s. Dull. Went to the islands with Shevich. Pleasant. Spent the evening at Obolensky’s with Aksakov,16 I. Kireyevsky and other Slavophiles. It’s evident that they are looking for an enemy who doesn’t exist. Their outlook is too narrow and not sufficiently provocative to meet with resistance. There’s no need for it. Their aims, like those of any intellectually active people brought together by means of discussions and polemics, have changed considerably, broadened and become based on serious truths such as family life, the commune and Orthodoxy. But they discredit them by the bitterness with which they express their views, as though expecting them to be contradicted. More calmness and Würde [dignity] would be more profitable. That is especially so with regard to Orthodoxy, first because, while recognising the justice of their opinion about the importance of the part this element plays in the life of the people, one cannot help also recognising, from a higher standpoint, the monstrosity of its expression and its historical bankruptcy, and secondly because the censorship stops their opponents’ mouths.

The day before yesterday I called on Nikolay Milyutin. He promised to take me to see Lyovshin.17

11 May    Yesterday morning I wrote a letter to Tatyana Alexandrovna, and the memorandum. At 2 o’clock I called at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Lyovshin gave me a chilly reception. Whatever you turn your hand to now in Russia, everything is in a state of change; but the people are old, and therefore unfitted to make changes. Dined at Shevich’s, wrote my project at Nekrasov’s and sent it off. Vile music at Shostak’s in the evening; supper at Dusseau’s and on to a brothel. Restrained myself.

12 May    Mikhail Islavin came in the morning, then Sokovnin and Timm. Timm asked me to write the text for his paper.18 I’m very glad. Dined at Nekrasov’s. Fet19 is a dear, and wonderfully talented. I enjoyed myself. Spent the evening with the Tolstoys20 and read The Two Hussars. Maltsova21 was there – a nice, but somehow ridiculous woman with the ingenuous naïveté of a thirty-five-year-old, wrinkles like an old woman and curls. On my return home I found a note from Vaska and Apoloshka22 and was awfully glad, like a man in love. Everything seemed to brighten up. Yes, the best way to true happiness in life is to have no rules, but to throw out from yourself in all directions like a spider a prehensile web of love and catch in it everything that comes along – an old lady, a child, a woman or a policeman.

13 May    Got up at 9. Went to gymnastics. It was dull without friends. Read The Naval Miscellany. I could have slapped Pogodin’s face with pleasure. Base flattery, seasoned with Slavophilism.23 A new trick. All these Moscow celebrations – what an un-Russian feature. Lyovshin said he had reported to the Minister, but all the same his reply was évasif. I’ll write the project, despite that. Dined at Kokorev’s.24 Cabbage soup, fermented milk, champagne and a gold salt-cellar in the Russian style. Barbarity, tastelessness and obscurity. Kokorev’s article is clever, but shameful; he touches on all our economic wounds superficially. Called on M. G. Nothing, nothing, silence!25 The Turgenevs26 weren’t at home. Spent the evening again at Tolstaya’s. Old Maltsova again.

14 May    Got up at 10. […] Kutler27 and the children came at 1, seven in all. Went to Yekaterinhof28 by boat. Enjoyed it, but was very tired. Found Meshchersky, Skaryatin and Makarov half-way through dinner at Donan’s.29 We went to Pavlovsk.30 Disgusting! Wenches, stupid music, wenches, an artificial nightingale, wenches, heat, cigarette smoke, wenches, vodka, cheese, wild shrieks, wenches, wenches, wenches!

Everyone tried to pretend they were enjoying themselves, and that they liked the wenches, but without success. In the train I was infuriated by some drunken, boisterous German civilians trying to carouse like officers.

15 May    Got up late, put my papers in order, wrote a letter to Turgenev. Alexandra Nikolayevna31 came. Called on Fet, went with him to the stock exchange, and from there to Dusseau’s for dinner with Makarov, Meshchersky, Gorbunov and Dolgorukov. From there to the theatre. A splendid woman next to me. Korolyov, author of Career‚ seems a brilliant mediocrity. From there to Dusseau’s and a ball, Dolgorukov, Meshchersky, Gorbunov and I. Three wenches, not bad. Felt jaded. Ogaryov32 – almost quarrelled with him. ‘The Marina Wood’33 in the morning. Poor Lanskoy!34 Spent about fifty roubles.

Never let slip opportunities for enjoyment and never look out for them. I make it a rule for all time never to enter an inn or a brothel.

Got up today at 3. Korolyov, Gorbunov and Dolgorukov came round. The first is no fool and a nice fellow. Took him to dinner at Nekrasov’s. He’s not well, but I’m beginning to like him. From there I went to Staff HQ. My leave will come through tomorrow. At the Bludovs’ Lydia35 embarrassed me by her expression of affection. I’m afraid it prevents me from seeing much that is bad in her. Said goodbye to her. […]

16 May    Got up late. Fet and Trusson36 came. The latter said charmingly that the second hussar is described without love. […]

17 May    Gorbunov, Dolgorukov, Pratz and Kolbasin junior came in the morning; I let the latter have a copy of Childhood and Boyhood out of my 10 per cent. Set off at 12, was bored on the journey.37 Travelled first with A. Lanskoy and then with some Austrian diplomat. Read A Superfluous Man.38 Awfully affected, coquettish, clever and skittish.

18 May‚ Moscow    Arrived at 10 and went straight to the Perfilyevs’. Two chubby fat things! Still, Vasenka is very good-looking. Went to dinner with the old Perfilyevs. Varenka wasn’t there, but it wasn’t dull. Some jaundiced Armenian card-player turned up with a Vladimir Order round his neck and a pretty wife, née Countess Panina. A hackneyed type and relationship in literature, but one which I now had occasion to see for the first time. Went to Kuntsevo after dinner. Found an empty dacha, a very nice one – books, cigars, and a glass of water, misted over from the ice which was thawing in it. First I met Druzhinin in the garden, then Botkin; in the evening Grigoryev came, and we chatted very pleasantly till 12.39  Some say that The Hussars is being abused, others – mostly writers – that it’s being praised.

21 May    The Koloshins and Zagoskin40 came in the morning. Dined at Aksakov’s. Met Khomyakov.41 A witty man. Argued with Konstantin42 about village readings, which he considers impossible. At the Gorchakovs’ in the evening I argued the exact opposite with Sergey Dmitriyevich; Sergey Dmitriyevich assured me that the peasantry are the most depraved class of all. Of course from being a Westerner I became an implacable Slavophile.

22 May    Dined at Dyakova’s. Didn’t recognise Alexandrina Obolenskaya,43 she’d changed so much. I didn’t expect to see her, and so the feeling she aroused in me was terribly strong. From there I went to the Aksakovs’ and heard the fourth part.44  Good, but they overpraised the old man. Returned to the Dyakovs’, danced a little and left there with Alexander Sukhotin, a man passionately in love.

Yes, it hurts me terribly even now to think of the happiness that might have been mine and which has fallen to that excellent man, Andrey Obolensky. Told Sukhotin of my feelings; he understood them, all the more so because, I think, he shares them.

23 May    […] Went to Yury Samarin’s45 with Obolensky. I like Samarin very much. A cold, supple and well trained mind. He was called to dinner and I left, promising to return at 11. Called in at Verochka’s. Thank God she didn’t give herself to me. At Botkin’s, at Kuntsevo and on the way there, I was moved to tears by the beauty of nature. From there I called in at the Perfilyevs’. Varenka was there; beautiful eyes, no smile, an impossible nose. Well built, awkward, probably intelligent and kind, although she pronounces her rs like the French – on the whole a very pleasant creature. I’d like to know her better.

24 May    In the morning I finished writing my diary and notebook, and was cruelly bored, foreseeing no possibility of meeting Alexandrine today. I’ve no reason to remain, but feel terribly unwilling to leave. Four feelings have taken hold of me with unusual force: love, the pangs of remorse (pleasant, though), the desire to marry (in order to escape from those pangs) and – nature. […]

Learned at home that the Obolenskys would be at the Sukhotins’. Went there. Sukhotina was strumming Chopin. Alexandrine came and went as usual, and we didn’t talk much. Once or twice when I spoke she was all attention. No, I’m not being carried away when I say that she is the sweetest woman I’ve ever known. The most refined, artistic and, at the same time, moral nature. […]

25 May    […] Alexandrine’s daughter is ill. She told Sergey Sukhotin in my presence that when she was betrothed they were not in love. Her husband wasn’t there. Was she trying to tell me that she wasn’t in love with him? Later, when saying goodbye, she suddenly gave me her hand and there were tears in her eyes because she had just been crying about her little girl’s illness; but I felt terribly happy. Then she unexpectedly saw me to the door. Certainly since Sonechka’s days I’ve never experienced such a pure, strong and good feeling. I say ‘good’, because although its hopeless, it makes me glad to stir it up. […]

26 May    […] Was too late to dine at Bakhmeteva’s, which I was very glad about, because I went on to Pokrovskoye with Kostenka and dined at Lyubochka Behrs’.46  The children waited on us – what sweet, jolly little girls – then we went for a walk and played leap-frog. […]

28 May, Yasnaya Polyana En route.    Mlle Vergani is the most palpable despot I’ve ever seen – foreigners are always like that. Called in at Sudakovo;47 life is wonderful there. At Yasnaya it’s sad – pleasant, but somehow not in harmony with my mood. However, when I compare myself with my Yasnaya memories of myself of old, I feel how much I’ve changed in a liberal sense. Even Tatyana Alexandrovna I find unpleasant. You couldn’t ram the injustice of serfdom into her head in a hundred years. On the journey I composed some poetry – poor, I think. Today I’m arranging a meeting and will speak. Let’s hope for the best.

Went to the meeting. Things are going well. The peasants understand and are glad. They see me as a speculator and therefore believe me. Fortunately I didn’t talk too much nonsense and spoke clearly. […]

31 May, Spasskoye-Pokrovskoye48    Set off on horseback for Turgenev’s before 5 in the morning. Arrived at 7. He was out. Chatted with Porfiry49 and finished writing my notebook. His house revealed his roots to me, and this explained a lot, and so reconciled me to him. He returned. I had breakfast, went for a walk, chatted very pleasantly with him and lay down to sleep. I was woken in time for dinner. His uncle’s family50 are a poor lot. Insipid, moralistic German women who are probably uncomfortable, therefore, in this landowning environment. They were talking about the murder of a peasant by a bailiff, and the doctor who had certified that the peasant hadn’t been murdered was present at dinner. We rode back home and chatted pleasantly, as we did at home where there were various easily amused young ladies. I’d like to write the story of a horse.51

1 June, Pokrovskoye    Got up at 10, whiled the time away with the children, then with Valeryan, then with Turgenev, with whom I had a bathe, and then with Masha. Later we went boating on a raft and made a little music. I’m pleased about Masha’s relations with Turgenev. He and I get on well, but I don’t know whether it’s because he’s changed or I have. […]

3 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Trinity Sunday. Arrived before 5 and, after walking through the house which had a nasty smell throughout, found enormous pleasure in sitting by the window which opened on to the garden. Read Pushkin’s Don Juan.52  Delightful! Such truth and power, which I’d never expected in Pushkin. Lay down to sleep and woke up at one. […] There was no meeting in the evening, but I learned from Vasily that the peasants suspect a fraud and think that everyone will be granted freedom at the coronation,53 and that I want to tie them down by contract – that it’s a ‘fiddle’, as he expressed it.

4 June    Got up at 5, and went for a walk with, I confess, terribly erotic thoughts. Read Pushkin’s first poems. Then sorted through my old exercise books – incomprehensible, but charming nonsense.54 Decided to write A Landowner’s Diary,55 The Cossack56 and the comedy.57 I’ll start on The Cossack first. Had breakfast, slept, had dinner, went for a walk, bathed in the Voronka, read Pushkin and went to see the peasants. They don’t want their freedom.

5 June    Got up at 6, rode off for a bathe with Osip, then into the open country. Came back, read through and made some corrections in The Cossack and roamed round the garden with the vague, lascivious hope of catching someone in the bushes. Nothing prevents me so much from working, so I decided at all costs to install a mistress for these two months. Did nothing; still felt disinclined either to revise or to go on writing. Tomorrow I’ll start afresh, using what I’ve written as raw material only. In the evening I went to Gimbut’s.58 A wonderful Russian girl – Begicheva.59 Gimbut’s wife is as dark as a raven – not stupid, but affected and unsympathetic. Durova60 disturbs me. Shall I never be her…?

6 June    Got up at 7 and rode to Grumant for a bathe. Terrible lust, amounting to physical pain. […]

7 June    Slept till 11 and woke up refreshed. Roamed round the garden, the kitchen garden and Grumant again, without any success of course. I’ll go to Gimbut’s tomorrow, for the same purpose. Read Pushkin, parts 2 and 3;61 The Gipsies is as delightful as it was the first time, but the other poems except for Onegin are terrible rubbish. Talked to some peasants in the evening, and their obstinacy drove me to anger which I could hardly restrain.

8 June    Got up after 9. Roamed round the garden. A very pretty peasant woman of very pleasing beauty. I’m unbearably loathsome with my feeble longing for vice. Vice itself would be better. Did gymnastics, bathed, roamed round the woods. Had a few sensible thoughts about my novel of a landowner. I think I’ll start work on it. Rode to Grumant to bathe and am going to bed morally ill, dissatisfied with my weakness and with a pain in my back from an awkward jump. Met Durova out riding alone, but said nothing to her.

10 June    Got up at 9. The pain in my back gets worse and worse. Read a biography of Pushkin62 and finished it. Walked round the Zakaz Wood,63 and thought out one or two things, chiefly that priority must be given to writing Youth, without abandoning the other things – Notes of a Russian Landowner, The Cossack and the comedy; for the latter particularly the main theme should be the debauchery everywhere in the country. The mistress with the footman. The brother with the sister. The father’s illegitimate son with the father’s wife, etc. The warden came but didn’t find me in, and it was too late afterwards. Started writing a note to Durova, but I’m afraid it’s too affectionate. There was a meeting in the evening. The peasants definitely refused to sign. The quit-rent will be discussed in autumn. And I’ll be in the country in autumn. But now I’m free.

12 June    […] It’s very bad that I’m beginning to feel a secret hatred towards my aunt, despite her love. I must learn to forgive her banality. Otherwise there can be no love or happiness. […]

13 June    Got up at 5, went fishing, roamed about. Was in a hair’s breadth of ordering the soldier to bring me a woman. Read Nikolenka’s charming story The Chechen girl.64 There’s a tremendous epic talent for you. Yesterday a soldier was found hanged in the Zaseka wood,65 and I rode round to have a look at him. Met Nadezhda66 who’s very sweet, and I can’t help forgiving her her banality. The soldier seemed to be standing up, trousers tucked in boots, a dirty shirt, cap turned inside out, overcoat thrown aside, legs bent in a strange way. Returned home, and met Nadezhda again; she was sweet again. Had a terrible headache, suffered a long time, fell asleep and woke up at 10 just before she left. All the same she’s sweet. Got on better with Auntie. Alyoshka has spoken to the soldier. A reply tomorrow. Valeriya67 has arrived. I’ll call on them tomorrow. Was talking to Agafya Mikhaylovna68 today. She told me about a blind peasant who works nevertheless, turning some machine. Starting tomorrow I’ll go round to all the peasants; I’ll find out about their needs and try to persuade them individually to accept contracts.

14 June    Got up at 9. Roamed around. Went with Natalya Petrovna69 to Gimbut’s and to Arsenyev’s. During lunch at Gimbut’s the inquest commission arrived.70 I was told the Arsenyevs had gone to Tula. I decided to stay. Nadezhda Nikolayevna71 invited me to go for a walk in the wood. Gimbut shouted that it was inconvenable [improper]; she pretended not to hear him; he sent M.A. and ran after us himself, urging me in the meanest and rudest manner in her presence not to compromise her. I went back with him and went to the inquest. Little yellow worms covered the dead person’s clothing all over. He was a young lad of sixteen. When I got back I learned that Natalya Petrovna had gone. Nadezhda Nikolayevna was horrid. Gimbut had suddenly got into a rage with Natalya Petrovna, called her a procuress and driven her out. Back home I went fishing; the soldier came and I ran off into Chepyzh wood. She was a horrid little rascal. Dyakov arrived about 10. Chatted with him till 3. Yes, he’s my best friend and a splendid one. Read Nikolenka’s story and began to cry again. I did so too when reciting the Cossack song. I’m beginning to like the epic legendary manner. I’ll try and make a poem out of the Cossack song.72

15 June    Got up at 10. Roamed around with Dyakov. He gave me much practical advice about laying out the separate wing, and above all advised me to marry Valeriya. Listening to him it seems to me too that this is the best thing I can do. Is it money that holds me back? No, opportunity. Then he took me as far as the turning to Sudakovo. Valeriya put on a stern expression, probably because of the letter. I was in good spirits and calmed them down. Poor girl, her aunt seems a worthless lot. Of course the best person she knows is Mlle Vergani, but that’s not saying much! A pity she has no backbone or fire – just like noodles. But she’s kind. And she smiles – a painfully submissive smile. Got home and sent for the soldier’s wife. Tomorrow morning I must write a letter to Bludov and get on with The Cossack. The soldier’s wife didn’t come.

18 June    Dyakov came, and I persuaded him to go to the Arsenyevs’ with me. Valeriya chattered about clothes and the coronation. Frivolity with her seems to be not a transient, but an enduring passion. […]

24 June    Went to the Arsenyevs’ with my aunts. Valeriya was awfully bad, and I’ve quite calmed down.

25 June    Was awoken with the news that a peasant had been drowned in the middle pond. Two hours have gone by and I’ve done nothing about it. Read The Newcomes73 and made notes. The soldier’s wife came in the evening, probably the last time.

26 June    Got up before 9, read The Newcomes, copied out my notes, re-read Youth, tried to write but just came to a stop. The peasant has been taken away.74 Did gymnastics, had a Lenten dinner at home and went to the Arsenyevs’ with Natalya Petrovna. Met a messenger on the way. Tarasov is staying with them. Valeriya was in a white dress. Very sweet. Spent one of the pleasantest days of my life. Do I love her seriously? And can she love for long? These are two questions I would like to solve for myself and can’t. […]

28 June    Got up at 10, and finished off the first chapter of Youth with great pleasure. Toothache worse. After dinner I went to the Arsenyevs’. Valeriya is terribly badly educated, and ignorant, if not stupid. One word, prostituer, which she said, God knows why, distressed me very much and, what with my toothache, disillusioned me.

30 June    Got up at 10, finished The Newcomes. Wrote a page of Youth, played the 5th symphony.75 The Arsenyevs came. Valeriya is a wonderful girl, but I definitely don’t like her. But if we see each other so often I might suddenly marry her. That wouldn’t be a misfortune, but it’s not necessary and I don’t want it, and I’m convinced that anything that isn’t necessary and isn’t wanted is harmful. […]

1 July    […] Spent the whole day with Valeriya. She had a white dress on and bare arms, and they aren’t attractive. This upset me. I began to tease her in a moral tone and so cruelly that she broke off smiling. There were tears in her smile. Then she played. I felt all right, but she was already distraught. All this I’m now aware of.

2 July    Wrote letters to Nekrasov about The Contemporary and about anger,76 and to Rosen and Korsakov. Had dinner and went to the Arsenyevs’. Valeriya was writing in a dark room and again wore a horrid flashy house-coat. She was cold and self-contained, and showed me a letter to her sister in which she said I was an egoist, etc. Then Mlle Vergani came in and recriminations began, first bantering then serious, which hurt and depressed me. I had seriously hurt her yesterday, but she spoke out frankly, and after the brief sadness I felt, it all passed over. She said several times: ‘Now let bygones be bygones.’ She was very sweet.

5 July    Woke early and had a bathe. A young girl ran up to me, but I was in a good frame of mind and sent her packing. Played with the children, dined and made music. Turgenev came. He’s definitely an uncongenial, cold and difficult person, and I’m sorry for him. I’ll never get on with him. Walked about at night with vague sensual desires till 2 o’clock.

7 July, Spasskoye    […] Went to Turgenev’s and am there now. On the way I experienced a religious feeling that moved me to tears.

8 July, Pokrovskoye    Got up late and came back. Seryozha, Masha and Valeryan behaved very badly. It’s unpleasant for Seryozha, and more so for them. Spent the day in a muddle. Turgenev has organised his life stupidly. You can’t organise it in such an extraordinary way. His whole life is a pretence of simplicity. I find him decidedly unpleasant. […]

12 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late with a sore throat. Did nothing. The Sudakovo folk came. Valeriya was better than ever, but her frivolity and lack of concern for anything serious are terrifying. I’m afraid she has the sort of nature that can’t even love children. But I spent the day very pleasantly all the same.

13 July    Got up early. Throat better but my back still aches. Rode to the oat-fields through Baburino to Myasoyedovo. The estate has been escheated and the peasants are free. The household serfs have settled on the land. I had a long talk with one of them. They go more often to the inn, and have cut down the orchards. Some are worse off, but they all say that they’re contented, that they are free, and can lie on the grass as much as they like. I want to go to the Arsenyevs’ and have a talk with Mlle Vergani.

Didn’t speak to Vergani. Met Zavalevsky there, and then Spechinsky. He seems a good fellow. They teased Valeriya to tears about the coronation.77 She wasn’t to blame at all, but I found it unpleasant, and I won’t go there again for a long time. Or perhaps it was that they have shown me too much friendship. I’m afraid of marriage and of baseness – that’s to say of amusing myself with her. But to marry – much would need to be changed, and I’ll need to work more on myself. Got back late.

18 July    Wrote a bit of my fantastic tale,78 and spent the whole day at home.

25 July    Got up at 12 and read Dead Souls with pleasure; had many thoughts of my own, but wrote nothing. The weather is fine. At dinner I managed to rouse Masha by means of an argument, and then had a pleasant talk with her. After dinner I went with Natalya Petrovna to see Valeriya. For the first time I found her without her gowns, as Seryozha puts it. She was ten times better – above all, natural. She had put her hair behind her ears, knowing that I like it like that. […] Spent the eveningly happily.

27 July    […] Argued irritably with Masha at dinner. Auntie stuck up for her. She said that Turgenev says it’s impossible to argue with me. Do I really have an evil nature? I must control myself, and the cause of it all is pride – Valeriya was right.

28 July    In the morning I wrote a letter to Kolbasin, and a report to Konstantinov and Mikhalsky, then went to the Arsenyevs’ who had invited me. It’s strange that I’m beginning to like Valeriya as a woman, whereas before it was just as a woman that she repelled me. Even so it’s not always the case, but only when I make up my mind to. Yesterday for the first time I noticed her bras, which used to repel me.

30 July    […] Found Valeriya and Mlle Vergani in tears. A letter from Olga;79  she’s apparently getting married. Valeriya entirely in negligé. Disliked her very much. She said something stupid about David Copperfield having to put up with a lot of misfortunes, etc. […]

1 August    Got up late, stomach terribly upset. Woke up early, and on waking up tried to think out my characters.80 My imagination was terribly vivid. I managed to picture the father to myself – splendidly. Finished writing The Examinations.81 The Arsenyevs came. Valeriya was in a confused state of mind, cruelly affected and stupid. […]

10 August    Wrote in the morning, and went to the Arsenyevs’ in the evening. They were just going to the bath-house. Valeriya and I spoke of marriage; she’s not stupid, and is exceptionally kind.

12 August    Went to the Arsenyevs’ at 10 to see them off. She was exceptionally simple and nice. I’d like to know whether I’m in love or not. […]

14 August    […] Had a discussion with Auntie about religion – it’s useless. I must remember this with my future wife. […]

22 August    Finished the first half of Youth in rough and thought out The Hunting Ground,82 the idea of which makes me very enthusiastic. Valeriya’s silence distresses me. […]

25 August    […] All I did was to tidy up my notes and read a bit of Little Dorrit.83

5 September    A nightmare during the night about being impotent. Dictated three chapters and corrected three. Had a very pleasant chat with Auntie. Health still bad. The thought that I’m almost impotent torments me.

13 September    Corrected Youth. Much worse again. I think I’ll die.

24 September    Health getting better and better. Mlle Vergani came. From what she says, Valeriya disgusts me. Finished Youth; poor, but sent it off.

25 September    In the morning, some thoughts about the estate. Did nothing. Went to the Arsenyevs’. Valeriya is sweet but, alas, simply stupid, and that’s where the shoe pinched.

26 September    Valeriya came. She’s sweet, but limited and impossibly trivial.

29 September, Sudakovo    Woke up at 9 in a bad temper. Valeriya is unfitted for either a practical or an intellectual life. I told her only the unpleasant part of what I wanted to say, and so it had no effect on her. I was angry. The conversation was steered round to Mortier,84 and it turned out that she’s in love with him. Strange; it offended me, and I felt ashamed for myself and for her, but for the first time I experienced something like feeling for her. Read Werther.85 Delightful. Auntie didn’t send for me, and I stayed another night.

1 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Woke up, still out of spirits. After midnight my side began to ache again for no apparent reason. Did nothing, but thought less about Valeriya, thank God. I’m not in love, but this relationship will always play a big part in my life. And if I haven’t yet known love, then judging by the small beginnings I feel now, I shall experience it with terrible force, and God forbid it should be for Valeriya. She is terribly shallow, without principles and cold as ice, as a result of which she is constantly being distracted. Wrote a letter to Kovalevsky yesterday and sent in my resignation.86

8 October    Went to the Arsenyevs’. I can’t help taunting Valeriya. It’s from habit, not feeling. She’s nothing to me but an unpleasant memory. Was on the point of beginning to write a comedy.87 Perhaps I’ll get down to it.

11 October, Lapotkovo88    Woke up before 9. Went hunting at Masha’s. Reached Lapotkovo at 5, having shot only one hare. Read Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and thought a lot about a comedy based on Olga’s life.89 In two acts. I think it could be pretty good. Read through the whole of this diary. Extremely pleasant.

14 October, Pokrovskoye    Got up early. Porfiry abused Nikolay Nikolayevich Turgenev to me for a couple of hours with great satisfaction. And Turgenev90 is entirely to blame. No artistic bent can exempt one from taking part in the life of the community. Which is better when you see a man with his throat cut – to turn away from him in disgust or to give him at least some clumsy assistance?

Did nothing all day. Got a letter yesterday from Ivan Turgenev which I didn’t like. Valeryan came in the evening. I don’t want to go to Moscow. Read The Pickwick Club91 and, on the journey, Molière.

15 October    Got up before 8 and wrote a little. Wrote the beginning of the comedy and a letter to Turgenev. Received a letter from Druzhinin. He praises Youth, but not too much. […]

19 October    Went to Tula. […] Spent the evening and the night at the Arsenyevs’. Looked more calmly at Valeriya. She’s grown terribly stout and I definitely have no feelings for her. Gave her to understand that we must have a serious talk; she was glad, but distraite. Olga is intelligent. Spent the night there.

22 October, Sudakovo    Spent the morning at home reading. Auntie is still sulking. I couldn’t stand it and rode to the Arsenyevs’. […] Pavlov was with them, so I couldn’t find an opportunity to tell Khrapovitsky’s92 story and therefore stayed the night. We talked a little and I promised to tell it in the morning.

23 October    Before Valeriya was up the Gimbuts came and I was again prevented from telling the story. After dinner we enjoyed ourselves very much. When the Gimbuts had gone we struck up a pleasant conversation the four of us at supper, and I told Khrapovitsky’s story to Mlle Vergani in the study, and she told it to Valeriya. A pity I didn’t tell it myself. I went to sleep almost at peace, but very far from in love – at their house.

24 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Valeriya appeared, embarrassed but pleased. I felt glad and ashamed. I left. Made my peace at home with Auntie.

Went to a ball. Valeriya was charming. I almost fell in love with her.

27 October    Ill in the morning, went for a walk; can’t write anything. Valeriya came. I didn’t like her particularly, but she is a very nice girl, and she said honestly and frankly that she wanted to prepare herself for communion after the Mortier affair. I showed her this diary; the entry for the 25th ended with the words ‘I love her’. She tore out that page.

28 October    Rode to Gimbut’s with the dogs and dined with him. In the morning I wrote letters to Daragan and Arsenyev, and went to Valeriya’s. She had some terrible hair style and was wearing purple for my sake. I felt hurt and ashamed, and spent the day sadly. Conversation didn’t flow. But quite involuntarily I’ve become a sort of fiancé. This vexes me. Found Seryozha in. Read Turgenev’s Faust93 at their house. It’s delightful.

29 October    Chatted all morning with Seryozha. Went with him to the Arsenyevs’. She was simple and nice. We chatted in a corner.

31 October, Tula    Spent the night at the Arsenyevs’. She’s not pretty. The constraint of my position vexes me more and more. Went to a ball, and she was very nice again. A pained voice and a desire to compromise herself and sacrifice something for me. Went to the hotel with them; they saw me off and I was almost in love.

1 November, Moscow    Thought only of Valeriya on the journey. Was not quite well. Reached Moscow during the night and stayed at Shevaldyshev’s.

2 November    Wrote Valeriya a long letter.94 Went to Masha’s. She is nice, and in good health. I told her about Valeriya; she is on her side. Spent the evening at Botkin’s very pleasantly, and at Ostrovsky’s.95 He’s dirty, and although a kind man, he’s a cold egoist. Terrible migraine.

3 November    In the morning a letter to Auntie. Skated at Mashenka’s with the children. Dined at Botkin’s. Grigoryev and Ostrovsky were there and I tried to insult their beliefs. Why? I don’t know. […]

4 November    Finished reading The Polar Star.96 Very good. Wrote my diary. […]

5 November    Wrote a little in the morning, dined again with Masha; The Misfortune of Being Clever at the theatre97 – excellent. […]

8 November    Wrote an irritable letter in the morning to Valeriya; didn’t send the first version, but a second one.98 Called on Druzhinin and Panayev;99 the editorial staff of The Contemporary are disgusting. Gymnastics. Dined with Goncharov100 and Druzhinin at Kles’s,101 and we spent the evening at my house together with Kovalevsky.102 Went to Krayevsky’s, and I’m very glad I did.

10 November    […] Bought a book, dined at home and read all Turgenev’s stories. Poor. Dictated a little. Went to Olga Turgeneva’s103 with Druzhinin. Druzhinin was ashamed on my account. Olga Turgeneva, it’s true, is worse than Valeriya, except for her beauty. I think about her a lot. I’ve found a flat. I’ll move tomorrow, and go to the Law Council. Dreamed of a waltz with Valeriya and a stange happening.

11 November    Began moving in the morning, read some rubbish, was tempted to join the service but refrained. Went to Davydov’s, read a review of Sevastopol in August and The Snow-storm – a clever and sensible one104 – and went to my flat. They hadn’t brought my boots – I was angry. Wrote a tiny little letter to Valeriya. I think about her very much. […]

13 Got up before 11, wrote the second scene of the comedy,105 went to gymnastics, met an aristocratic boy there. Went to Druzhinin’s between 3 and 4. Goncharov and Annenkov were there. They all disgust me, especially Druzhinin, and they disgust me because I want to love, I want friendship, and they’re incapable of it. Followed them in a cab towards Kushelyov’s and then dropped behind them; I was very glad I did. Dined at Kles’s – rather expensive. From there I called on A.P., but God saved me. Even called on F. and also escaped unsullied, thank God. […] Read through the fair copy of The Novel of a Russian Landowner. It may turn out to be good. Dictated a very little of Reduced to the Ranks and finished a letter to Valeriya – very coldly.106

14 November    Got up early. Wrote a little of Reduced to the Ranks in the morning. Went to Panayev’s. Was bored. I’m terribly sensitive to praise and blame. […]

15 November    Did nothing of what I’d planned. Got up in the morning and corrected Reduced to the Ranks, read Henry IV107 and was angry with The Contemporary.108 Gymnastics. Dined at Botkin’s. The Contemporary affair. I expressed my opinion in part. Read Reduced to the Ranks. Coldly received. From there Druzhinin and I went to Annenkov’s and found him playing the organ. Then to Bezobrasov’s. A meeting of writers and scholars is offensive to me, and it doesn’t come off without women. Then we had supper with Annenkov and talked a good deal. He’s very intelligent and a good man.

16 November    […] Finished reading Henry IV, No! […]

17 November    In the morning revised The Novel of a Russian Landowner, it’s dreadfully diffuse. Gymnastics. Dined at home and worked at the same thing till 9. Went to Botkin’s, found Druzhinin there, and spent a pleasant evening; I was kind and modest, and that made it nice. Argued with Botkin about whether a poet pictures his reader to himelf or not. He’s inclined to be vague. Druzhinin was good-natured. Received 100 roubles from Kolbasin.

20 November    Got up at 10 and wrote a little. Gymnastics. Dined at Druzhinin’s. Pisemsky was there. Obviously he doesn’t like me, and this hurt me. Druzhinin refused to listen to me, and that jarred on me. Found a letter from Valeriya at home. There’s nothing new in her letters. An immature, loving nature. Answered her and went to bed at 3.

21 November    Got up at 1. Maykov came. Gymnastics. Dined at Stolypin’s and was rude to his wife. At Botkin’s all evening. Read The Novel of a Russian Landowner. It’s definitely poor, but I’ll publish it. I must cross things out. Called on Alexandra Petrovna, and felt disgusted as a result.

22 November    Got up at 11. Wanted to write, but it was no good. Gymnastics. Dined at Panayev’s. Then at Krayevsky’s till the evening. The literary atmosphere disgusts me to a greater extent than anything ever before. Wrote a letter to Valeriya. Thought about her a lot. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t seen any women all this time.

23 November    […] Received a nice letter from Valeriya and replied to her.109  Thought about Alexandra Petrovna and at the same time very, very much about Valeriya. How I long to have done with the journals as soon as possible, in order to write in the way in which I’m now beginning to think about art – a terribly pure and exalted way.

25 November    Got up at 9. Slept badly again. Went to the menagerie early. Went to Kovalevsky’s. He was nice. They played some rubbish at the University. The Emperor has read Childhood. A lady with sensual eyes at the menagerie. […] The sensual lady’s expression made me think with horror about Valeriya.

27 November    Got up at 10. Received a stupid letter from Valeriya. She’s fooling herself and I can see through it – that’s what’s tiresome. […] Roamed around with sensual aims. A drunken wench on the Nevsky. Went to the bath-house. Wrote a cold letter to Valka.110

29 November    […] Kamenskoy, Dudyshkin and Goncharov gave faint praise to A Landowner’s Morning. My thoughts about Valeriya are few and unpleasant.

30 November    […] Called on Alexandra Petrovna and found Yakovlev there. Fate saved me – I was within a hair’s breadth. Received a registered letter, a nice one, from Valeriya. The Emperor read Childhood and wept.

1 December    Got up at 11, wrote yesterday’s diary and played till it was time for gymnastics. Arm very sore, dined at home, finished reading Carmen111 – feeble, French; received a letter from Turgenev and sent him one. […]

3 December    I’m writing nothing. Read Mérimée – good – and thought about the comedy.112 Gymnastics; it’s good that there’s no pain. Dined at home, fell asleep, went to Shevich’s, was bored, played cards. Went to Botkin’s; Panayev praised Youth highly. […]

5 December    In the morning read A Commonplace Story113 and sent it to Valeriya. […]

7 December    Got up late, wrote a letter to Valeriya,114 gymnastics, dined at home, read The Poor Bride115 – it’s simply feeble. His mistress is good. Went to the circus. Had supper at Dusseau’s, I don’t know why. Read Druzhinin’s second article.116 His weakness is that he never doubts whether it mightn’t all be rubbish.

10 December    From 2 to 8 in the morning read Auerbach’s wonderful Befehle.117 […]

11 December    Read Lear,118 it had little effect on me. […]

12 December    […] Feel very sad. Dreamed about a blood-bath on the floor. Also a brown woman on my chest, bending down naked and whispering something.

15 December    Was woken up by Alexandra Nikolayevna. I —ed her, and she went off with twenty-five silver roubles. Very late for gymnastics. […]

17 December    Woke up at 11, began revising the third instalment of Youth; the proofs had been brought to me, scribbled all over by the ecclesiastical censors. Went to gymnastics, and was in very good spirits. Had a fall. Dined at Botkin’s, didn’t praise his article and he was angry.119 Then to Turgenev’s. Lear120 is delightful. But I’m still uncomfortable with Olga Alexandrovna; it’s Vanechka’s fault.121  Tomorrow I’ll go and see Father Johann,122 and write to Nikolenka, Auntie and Valeriya.

18 December    Woken at 11. Went to see Father Johann – the swine! To Panayev’s. Chernyshevsky123 was there and was nice. […]

28 December    Got up late. Kept thinking about the comedy. It’s nonsense. Gymnastics. I’ve received my discharge certificate. Dined at Shevich’s. Bludov is a swine. Vyazemsky has censored the last chapter.124 […]

29 December    Got up late. Received a long letter from Valeriya, which I found unpleasant. Gymnastics. Was angry at home. Dined at Botkin’s. The stupidity and the ignorance of the censors is awful. […]

30 December    University concert. Meeresstille.125 Excellent. […]

Notes

1 Dmitry’s mistress and Tolstoy’s aunt Tatyana respectively.

2 Tolstoy had moved out of Turgenev’s apartment and was now living on Ofitserskaya Street.

3 Apparently over some remarks by Tolstoy about George Sand which Turgenev considered crude and vulgar.

4 A. A. Krayevsky, a journalist and subsequently editor of Notes of the Fatherland and The Voice. Tolstoy’s story A Landowner’s Morning appeared in the former journal in 1856, but Krayevsky published nothing else by him.

5 One of the two unfinished comedies (or two versions of the same comedy) of which only the opening scenes have survived – A Family of the Gentry and A Practical Person–and which were evidently to concern the moral decline of a rich landowning family.

6 A slightly premature rumour. The Treaty of Paris which officially brought the Crimean War to a close was not signed until later in the month.

7 Also premature!

8 The first mention of Two Hussars.

9 The pretext for the challenge was a letter sent to Nekrasov by M. N. Longinov, a literary historian and bibliographer, which accused Tolstoy of insufficient freedom of thought. Tolstoy evidently read the letter ‘accidentally’. Nekrasov was able to intervene to prevent the threatened duel.

10 Two fragments survive of an article about crime and punishment in Russian army legislation.

11 All three visits may have been connected with Tolstoy’s interest in the possibility of emancipating his serfs. Kavelin, a lawyer by training, had recently compiled a memorandum on the subject which was circulating in manuscript, and Tolstoy was drafting his own plans for emancipating the Yasnaya Polyana serfs on generous terms.

12 An actor and writer. The reference to his ‘improvement’ is not clear.

13 N. A. Milyutin, a liberal statesman of somewhat radical views, was intimately associated at the Ministry of Internal Affairs with the plans for the Emancipation of 1861.

14 About the emancipation of his Yasnaya Polyana serfs.

15 Tolstoy was still in the army and had applied for eleven months’ leave.

16 Probably Ivan Sergeyevich, the third son of S. T. Aksakov and soon to become editor of the Slavophile journal Russian Conversation. He was in Petersburg at the time, looking into abuses in the commissariat system during the recent war.

17 An official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who had compiled a historical account of serfdom in Russia for the Emperor and whom Tolstoy had approached in connection with his plans to emancipate his serfs.

18 V. M. Timm, an editor and artist who had been in the Crimea during the recent war and drawn various military subjects. He apparently wanted Tolstoy to provide a text for these drawings, to be published in his periodical, but Tolstoy did not do so.

19 The poet A. A. Fet whom Tolstoy first got to know on his return from Sevastopol and who became a close friend (Letters, I, 135–6). Their extant correspondence is considerable, and Fet’s memoirs contain some interesting biographical material about Tolstoy.

20 Countess A. A. Tolstaya, Tolstoy’s relative and life-long friend who occupied a high position at the Imperial court. Tolstoy described his extensive correspondence with her as ‘one of the best source materials’ for his own biography (Letters, I, 103–4). The other Tolstoys referred to here are her mother and sister.

21 The wife of the wealthy industrialist and factory owner S. I. Maltsov.

22 V. S. Perfilyev and A. N. Volkov (a translator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

23 A reference to Pogodin’s ultra-patriotic article on the Moscow celebrations in honour of the Sevastopol sailors which appeared in the May issue of the Naval Miscellany.

24 V. A. Kokorev, who made a vast fortune out of tax-farming and also wrote on economic affairs.

25 An expression derived from Gogol’s Notes of a Madman which Tolstoy used to denote lack of success with women.

26 A. N. Turgenev and his daughter Olga (with whom the novelist Ivan Turgenev had a brief romance). He had a varied career as a soldier and administrator and published some interesting articles.

27 An officer who had served in the Caucasus and the Crimea and whom Tolstoy portrayed in the person of Butler in Hadji Murat.

28 Peter the Great’s palace built for his wife Yekaterina near the Gulf of Finland.

29 A restaurant on the Moika in Petersburg.

30 The Emperor Paul’s palace a little to the south of Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). Both Pavlovsk and Yekaterinhof had large parks open to the public.

31 Probably A. N. Zhukova, a demi-mondaine, with whom Tolstoy was consorting at the time.

32 One of the sons of a landowner on the adjacent estate to Yasnaya Polyana with whom Tolstoy’s father was very friendly.

33 The name of an inn.

34 Probably the son of the Minister of Internal Affairs.

35 Lydia Shevich, a married woman in her forties, who was evidently taking a particular interest in Tolstoy at the time.

36 Possibly F. I. Trusson, the brother of Lydia Volkonskaya. The reference is to the young Turbin in Two Hussars.

37 Tolstoy’s leave had been granted and he left for Moscow on 17 May.

38 By Turgenev (The Diary of a Superfluous Man).

39 Botkin had a dacha at Kuntsevo, a summer colony near Moscow, and his friend Druzhinin was living there with him at the time. Both men were writers and critics and both were staunch advocates of ‘art for art’s sake’ which led them to break with The Contemporary as it became more left-wing (Letters, I, 61 and 91). Apollon Grigoryev, a literary critic, translator and poet, contributed to various periodicals and was closely associated with Dostoyevsky in his short-lived journal Time.

40 The son of the novelist Zagoskin. He worked for many years compiling material for a major biography of Nicholas I.

41 A. S. Khomyakov, a leading Slavophile writer and religious thinker. Tolstoy was never on close terms with him, but said much later that he greatly respected him and his Slavophile views.

42 Konstantin Aksakov. He wrote to Turgenev about their conversation with Tolstoy, finding him a strange person and unsure of himself, at times talking intelligently and at other times getting stuck, repreating himself and not apparently understanding what was said.

43 The sister of Tolstoy’s friend D. A. Dyakov and recently married to Prince Andrey Obolensky – a fact which Tolstoy, who was fond of her, clearly regretted. She was later to be actively involved in the cause of women’s education in Russia.

44 Of S. T. Aksakov’s Family Chronicle.

45 Y. F. Samarin, a leading Slavophile writer and public figure. Tolstoy found him one of the most pleasant people he had ever known and often consulted him when writing about problems of the philosophy of history in War and Peace (Letters, I, 210).

46 Tolstoy’s future mother-in-law and a friend of his from childhood days (she was only two years older than he was). The Behrs had a dacha at Pokrovskoye-Streshnevo, a few miles from the centre of Moscow.

47 The estate of the Arsenyevs, some five miles from Yasnaya Polyana.

48 Spasskoye-Lutovinovo – Turgenev’s estate in the Oryol province. Pokrovskoye – the estate of Tolstoy’s sister’s husband, about fifty miles from Yasnaya Polyana, which passed to her after her husband’s death.

49 Porfiry Kudryashov, an emancipated serf – possibly the illegitimate brother of Turgenev – who accompanied him abroad as a man-servant and later became a dentist (the model for Khariton in Turgenev’s story Mumu).

50 N. N. Turgenev, who managed the novelist’s mother’s estates at the time.

51 The first mention of Strider.

52 The Stone Guest.

53 The forthcoming coronation of Alexander II in August 1856.

54 Perhaps the philosophical notes and essays dating from his student days. See R. F. Christian, Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction, pp. 6–10.

55 A diary which Tolstoy kept from 28 May to 10 June 1856, recounting his unsuccessful attempts to ease the lot of his serfs before the official emancipation a few years later.

56 The Fugitive Cossack, an early title of The Cossacks.

57 See Note 5.

58 A local forester.

59 M. S. Begicheva, a singer.

60 Gimbut’s wife was a Durova; the Durova mentioned by Tolstoy was one of her sisters.

61 Volumes 2 and 3 of Annenkov’s edition of Pushkin’s works.

62 Materials for a Biography of Pushkin, which was the first volume of Annenkov’s edition.

63 A wood on Tolstoy’s estate where he was eventually to be buried.

64 Nothing is known of this story.

65 A big larch wood near Yasnaya Polyana, originally planted as a protection against Tatar raids.

66 Nadezhda Gimbut, the forester’s wife.

67 V. V. Arsenyeva, whom Tolstoy seriously contemplated marrying. His letters to her, of which twenty have survived, give an illuminating picture of his views on marriage and the ideal wife. (Letters, I, 63 ff.) Tolstoy later portrayed aspects of his romance with her in his story Family Happiness.

68 A housemaid who spent all her life at Yasnaya Polyana and who was affectionately remembered by Tolstoy in his Memoirs and by his sister-in-law Tatyana Kuzminskaya. Tolstoy used her as a model for the housemaid Pasha in Childhood and Boyhood, and also in Anna Karenina.

69 Okhotnitskaya, an indigent gentlewoman who lived with the Tolstoys.

70 To investigate the death of the soldier found hanged.

71 See Note 66.

72 The Fugitive, which Tolstoy had begun to write in verse form some years earlier and had still apparently not abandoned the idea entirely.

73 Thackeray’s novel was published in Russian translation in The Contemporary in 1855–6.

74 The peasant who had been drowned on the estate.

75 By Beethoven.

76 Letters, I, 59–61.

77 She was to go to Alexander II’s coronation and be presented at court.

78 Only the first few pages have survived of a story which opens in the Crimea in 1855.

79 Valeriya’s sister.

80 For Youth.

81 A chapter of Youth.

82 The story was left unfinished.

83 Tolstoy evidently read Dickens’ novel in English.

84 A concert pianist from whom Valeriya was taking lessons, thereby arousing Tolstoy’s jealousy.

85 Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers.

86 From the army.

87 Uncle’s Blessing. Only a list of characters and a synopsis of the two acts remain, from which it appears that it was to have been a satire directed against emancipated women.

88 A post-station less than twenty miles from Yasnaya Polyana.

89 Uncle’s Blessing. Olga was probably to be modelled on Valeriya’s sister. Molière’s comedy obviously acted as a stimulus to Tolstoy.

90 Ivan Turgenev, the novelist, whose frequent absences from Spasskoye were responsible, in Tolstoy’s opinion, for the fact that N. N. Turgenev was allowed to neglect the management of the estate (for which he was eventually dismissed).

91 The first Russian translation of Dickens’ novel was serialised in Notes of the Fatherland in 1849–50.

92 Tolstoy called himself by that name in his letters to Arsenyeva when discussing his relationship with her (he called her Dembitskaya).

93 Turgenev dedicated his story Faust to Tolstoy’s sister.

94 Letters, I, 64.

95 A. N. Ostrovsky, the popular and immensely prolific dramatist. Tolstoy often commented on Ostrovsky’s plays in his diaries and letters, but only four of his letters to the dramatist have survived (Letters, II, 403).

96 Herzen’s journal, published in London. Two issues came out in 1855 and 1856.

97 Tolstoy saw Griboyedov’s comedy at the Maly Theatre.

98 Letters, I, 67.

99 I. I. Panayev, editor-in-chief of The Contemporary and remembered today for his Literary Reminiscences (Letters, I, 51).

100 A. I. Goncharov, the author of three major novels, A Commonplace Story, Oblomov and The Precipice, of which only the second is well known outside Russia.

101 On the site of the pre-revolutionary Hôtel de l’Europe (now the Yevropeyskaya Gostinitsa).

102 A writer, traveller and senator who had been attached to Prince Gorchakov’s staff on the Danube and in the Crimea.

103 The daughter of A. M. Turgenev (see Note 26).

104 By Dudyshkin in Notes of the Fatherland.

105 Free Love, another fragment which overlaps in characters and subject matter with Uncle’s Blessing. Two scenes and the beginning of a third scene of the first act have survived.

106 Letters, I, 72.

107 Shakespeare’s historical drama.

108 For reprinting some poems by Nekrasov the journal got into trouble with the censors, and there were threats of a possible closure. It was felt in literary circles that the editors had acted imprudently.

109 Letters, I, 78.

110 I.e. Valeriya (the letter has not survived).

111 Prosper Mérimée’s story.

112 Either A Family of the Gentry or A Practical Person.

113 By Goncharov.

114 Letters, I. 84.

115 A comedy by Ostrovsky.

116 A Criticism of the Gogol period of Russian Literature and our Attitude towards it. In his two articles Druzhinin took issue with the aesthetic views of Chernyshevsky.

117 Des Schlossbauers Befehle from his collection of stories of peasant life in the Black Forest.

118 Druzhinin’s translation of Shakespeare’s play.

119 Botkin’s article on Fet’s poetry.

120 Not Shakespeare’s play, but A. M. Turgenev, now an old man in his eighties, the father of Olga Turgeneva.

121 Olga Alexandrovna Turgeneva and Ivan Turgenev respectively.

122 The archimandrite Johann Sokolov, a member of the ecclesiastical censorship committee which had made some cuts in Youth.

123 Tolstoy’s opinion about the radical critic and journalist Chernyshevsky was not always so positive (Letters, I, 154).

124 In fact the next to last chapter of Youth, describing the unusual circumstances of the dissipated student Semyonov’s conscription as a soldier.

125 Mendelssohn’s symphonic poem Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

1857

1 January    [Petersburg]. Slept badly all night. I’ve heard too much music these last few days. Woke up after 11; received a dry but nice letter from Turgenev. Wrote a letter to Valeriya, short and dry, and one to Nekrasov which I was advised not to send. Translated a fairy tale by Andersen.1 Read it over dinner at Botkin’s, but they didn’t like it. Botkin had received a letter from Nekrasov in which he spoke of me in flattering tones. We had a pleasant chat. I went to Olga Turgeneva’s and stayed with her till after 11. I liked her better than ever. Could hardly restrain myself from going to a masquerade.

2 January    Got up late, went to gymnastics, and from there to Botkin’s for dinner; then, with Annenkov, to Druzhinin’s, where we wrote a draft charter for the Fund.2 In the morning I read Belinsky,3 and I’m beginning to like him. A terrible headache.

3 January    Got up very late, read a delightful article about Pushkin, and went to see Bludova and Shevich; the former was out, and the latter has practically refused to take part in the theatrical performance.4 Gymnastics. Dinner at Botkin’s. From there to Tolstoy’s.5 He has a sweet, rather shallow, childishly poetic nature. From there to Krayevsky’s before 10, and to the masquerade before 12. At first it was very dull, then at supper with Stolypin and Stakhovich a sweet mouth approached me. I solicited it for a long time; it drove off with me, agreed reluctantly and took off its mask at my house. As like Alexandrine Dyakova as two peas, only older and with coarser features. I took her back home, and all night and the next day felt my old happiness again.

4 January    Got up after 1. The article on Pushkin6 is wonderful. Only now have I understood Pushkin. Gymnastics. Dined at Botkin’s just with Panayev. He read Pushkin to me, I went into Botkin’s room, wrote a letter there to Turgenev, and then sat down on the sofa and wept groundless, but blissful, poetic tears. I’ve been decidedly happy all this time. I’m intoxicated by the speed of my moral progress forward. Went to Druzhinin’s and Pisemsky’s in the evening, and contrary to expectations spent it pleasantly; his wife must be a splendid woman.

7 January    […] Kiesewetter’s story7 greatly attracts me.

8 January    People will remember my words that in two years’ time the peasants will rise in revolt unless they are sensibly emancipated before then. Woke up; beautiful weather; the first person I met was Kiesewetter. After gymnastics I went round to see Albrecht and fetch a violin. Found Druzhinin in a fume; no one else came to dinner. It’s surprising that I feel uncomfortable when I’m alone with him. Kieswewetter came. He’s clever, brilliant and sensible. He’s a brilliant ‘eccentric’ (yurodivy). […]

10 January    Gymnastics. Received my passport and decided to go.8 […]

12 January, en route for Moscow    […] Three poets. (1) Zhemchuzhnikov – power of expression, few sparks, draws on others. (2) Kiesewetter – fire and no power. (3) The artist – values both, and says that he’s burnt out.9 […]

Must write every day, without interruption: (1) The Hunting Ground, (2) Second half of Youth, (3) The Fugitive, (4) The Cossack, (5) The Lost One, (6) A Woman’s Story – ‘Nuts for the squirrel when it has no teeth’. She loves and feels she has the right to, just when she has too little left to give.10 (7) The comedy A Practical Person; a George Sand woman11 and a Hamlet of our times, a clamouring, sick protest against everything; but lack of character.

15, 16, 17, 18 January    Can’t remember what happened each day. Oppressed by loneliness, idleness and the absence of women. […]

20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 January    A reading at S. T. Aksakov’s. His Childhood is delightful!12 A ball at the Naryshkins’, danced two quadrilles, was bored. A ball at the Voyeykovs’. Muromtseva is consumptive – enjoyed myself. Ostrovsky’s A Lucrative Post13 is his best work and satisfies the need to portray the world of bribery. But his vanity is impossible. Mengden14 is a remarkable woman. Evening at the Sushkovs’. Tyutcheva15 is nice.

29 January, en route16    Morning at home, called on the Aksakovs and [indecipherable], dinner at Chevalier’s. Set off, horrible seats, some Frenchmen and a Pole travelling with me. I’m not quite independent yet, but I’ve thought a lot about The Lost One. […]

3 February Indigestion,17    cold, boredom, moral fatigue. I think The Lost One is quite ready. Remembered my shameful irresolution in the matter of the papers for Herzen, which Kasatkin brought me as instructed in a letter from Kolbasin.18 I told Chicherin19 about it, and he seemed to despise me. I want to write a letter to Mlle Vergani to prove that the fault, si fault il y a, is not mine, and very much want to write to Mengden. She’s charming. What joyful relations we could have. Why don’t I feel such pleasure with my sister? Perhaps the whole charm consists of standing on the threshold of love.

9/21 February, Paris    All this time on the journey. Confusion in my head and in my notes. Arrived in Paris today.20 I’m alone, without a servant, doing everything myself; a new city, a new way of life, no ties, and the spring sunshine which I caught the feel of. Undoubtedly a new era. Regular habits and above all at least four hours’ solitude and work each day. Couldn’t get on with Turgenev and Nekrasov. I’ve spent a lot of money and seen absolutely nothing. […] Turgenev is suspicious and painfully weak. Nekrasov is gloomy.

10/22 February    Got up late, a noise in my ears all the time, cold in the rooms; but wrote three letters, though short ones, then went for a stroll. Turgenev and Nekrasov went off to a shooting gallery for some reason. It made me feel sad. I detached myself from them and wandered about alone, but wasn’t bored and found a flat – 206!21 Strange. Had dinner with them and was still sad; saw Nekrasov off. Turgenev is a child. Then Orlov22 took me to the theatre, playing the aristocrat. Absurd! Why did I go up to Gorchakov? I’m terribly loathsome. Came home tired and empty.

11/23 February    Got up late, dawdled a long time at home tidying up, went to the bank, drew out 800 francs, made some purchases and moved my quarters.23 Called on the Lvovs; she’s nice – a Russian.24 Read Napoleon’s speech25 with indescribable revulsion. Made a start on the journey26 at home and had dinner. A lively woman; I was struck dumb with confusion. The theatre. Précieuses ridicules and L’Avare27 – excellent. Vers de Vergile28 – an intolerable abomination.

12/24 February    […] The theatre. Marivaux’s Les fausses confidences – a delightful piece of elegance. Plessy.29 Le malade imaginaire30 – delightfully acted.

16/28 February    Got up at 10; I’m sleeping better. My English teacher arrived at once.31 Lessons with him are going badly. I’ll get rid of him. Then Orlov came; read Honorine;32 an immense talent. Went to the Sorbonne.33 Superficial. Witticisms about Pliny. Went for a walk. Dined at home. Fitz James nothing special, but the Spanish countess is delightful. […]

19 February/3 March    Morning at home till 2. Received a letter from Valeriya. Visited Gamier – a philosopher and follower of Descartes. Roamed around till 5. Dined at home. A disgusting Englishman. Went to a concert with Turgenev: a delightful trio,34 and Viardot.35 Delsarte.36 Picked up … on the streets. It’s sad at Turgenev’s.

22 February/6 March    Got up late. Went to the Collège de France. Baudrillard.37  Simple and precise. Franck38 – remarkable intelligence and conscientiousness, but incomprehensible religiosity. […]

23 February/7 March    My Italian teacher. Late for Rigault.39 Hôtel de Cluny – interesting;40 I’ve started believing in chivalry. Dined with Turgenev upstairs at Durand’s. Went to the Khlyustins – spiteful people. Roamed around. An accosteuse.41 I ruined my evening and felt morally agitated and tormented.

24 February/8 March    Turgenev called in the morning and I went for a drive with him. He’s kind, and terribly weak. Fontainebleau château. The forest. In the evening I wrote too impetuously.42 When I’m with him I keep an eye on myself. It’s good for me. Although it’s a bit hurtful to feel someone else’s sharp gaze always on one, one’s own becomes more effective.

25 February/9 March, Paris—Dijon    Slept badly. We set off at 8;43 played chess on the journey. Turgenev doesn’t believe in anything, that’s his trouble; he doesn’t love, but loves to love. Went to the baths – disgusting. In spite of these comforts, there are heaps of privations of a sort for the likes of us Russians. Dined at a café. Wrote both badly and well. Rather the former – too impetuously and carelessly.

26    February/10    March,    Dijon    Slept splendidly. In the morning I wrote a wonderful chapter. Went round the churches with Turgenev. Had dinner. Played chess at a café. Turgenev’s vanity, as the normal habit of an intelligent man, is nice. At dinner I told him something he didn’t suspect, that I consider him to be my superior. […]

1/13March    Got up late. Turgenev is a bore: I want to go to Paris, but he can’t be alone. Alas! He’s never loved anyone. Read The Lost One to him. It left him cold. We almost quarrelled. Did nothing all day.

2/14 March, Dijon to Paris    Went to Paris. Railways a disaster. Dinner. Mme Fitz James. Calves. Trubetskaya. ‘Nothing, nothing, silence.’ Stupid ball. Unclothed wenches. […]

3/15 March    Got up at 1. Went to the Louvre with de M. Rembrandt’s portrait and Murillo. Dined at home, then La fille du regiment,44 dancing and champagne alone.

4/16 March    Got up late. Went to the Hôtel des Invalides. Deification of a villain, it’s terrible. Soldiers – animals trained to bite everyone. They ought to starve to death. Legs torn off – serve them right. Notre dame. Dijon is better. Fontainebleau. Terribly sad. Spent a pile of money. Late for dinner with the Trubetskoys. I’ve stopped liking the princess. Home succeeded and then failed.45 I must try myself. Called on Turgenev. He’s a bad man in that he’s cold and useless, but he’s very clever artistically and does nobody any harm. Received a telegram from Seryozha and replied. Terribly sad. Activity is the only remedy.

5/17 March    […] Dined at home. Fitz James is a bore. Fortunately I saw The Barber of Seville instead of Rigoletto. Wonderful. Called on Turgenev. No, I must avoid him. I’ve paid tribute enough to his merits and run after him from all directions in order to be friends with him, but it’s impossible.

6/18 March    Got up at 1. Got dressed, went to the Stock Exchange, and did some shopping. The Stock Exchange is terrible. Had dinner; disgusted by a fellow-countryman of mine at home. Went to the Bouffes-Parisiens.46 Something truly French. It was funny. The comedy is so good-natured and spontaneous that it can get away with anything. Roamed the streets for an hour with evil thoughts. […]

7/19 March    Last night I was tormented by sudden doubts about everything. And now, although they don’t torment me, they are still with me. Why? And what am I? More than once it seemed to me that I was solving these questions, but no, my life has provided me with no confirmation of that. Got up earlier, worked hard at Italian. Went for a walk to the Colonne Vendôme and along the boulevards. Turgenev called at 5, and seemed to look guilty. What can I do? I respect, value and even love him, I suppose, but I feel no sympathy for him and that’s mutual. Mme Fitz James perspires, and is a dreadful flirt. Aux Variétés! Le quadrille des Lanciers47 – delightful! […]

10/22March    My brother48 and Obolensky arrived. […]

12/24 March    Got up late. Went to the Louvre and the Cour d’assises. Dined with Lvova and argued impudently. From there to the Café des Aveugles, Rigoletto and home.

13/25March    Went riding with Seryozha, had dinner with the Trubetskoys. It was easy for me, but difficult for him. To Turgenev’s, then to a ball. With Margarita to her place. […]

15/27 March    Got up late. Went to Versailles. Feel my lack of knowledge. […] Went to the Folies Nouvelles49 – loathsome. Diable d’argent50 – likewise. The Emperor escorted by hussars. At Turgenev’s. […] Went to see Père-Lachaise.51

20 March/1 April    […] Dined with Seryozha and saw him off. Impossible muddle and helplessness. Our development is so different that we can’t live together, although I’m very fond of him. Went to a concert. The Olsufyevs, husband and wife, seem to feel the impression they’ve made on me. The Largo was delightful. Set off home, cheerful and at peace. A woman disturbed me. I went to her place, but remained flrm. The debauchery is terrible!

22 March/3 April    […] Turgenev woke me. It seems he probably has spermatorrhoea, but he still won’t have treatment and gads about. […]

23 March/4 April    Got up at 12. Began writing in a rather lazy fashion. Read Balzac.52 Bricon was admitted; I went out to escape from him and returned at 5. Read Myrrha53 in Italian, and had dinner upstairs. Went to see Ristori54 – a single poetic movement makes up for the falseness of five acts. The drama of Racine and the like is Europe’s poetic wound. Thank God we haven’t got it and won’t have. […]

25 March/6 April    Got up at 7 feeling ill and went to see an execution.55 A stout, white, strong neck and chest. He kissed the Gospels and then – death. How senseless! The impression it made was a strong one and not wasted on me. I’m not a political person. Morality and art. I know, I love and I can. Feel unwell and depressed; I’m going to dinner at the Trubetskoys’. Wrote a stupid letter to Botkin. […] Went to Turgenev’s. He doesn’t talk any more, he only chatters; he doesn’t believe in intelligence, or in people, or in anything. But I found it pleasant. The guillotine kept me awake a long time and made me reflect.

26 March/7 April    Got up late, felt unwell, read, and suddenly a simple and sensible idea occurred to me – to leave Paris.56 […] I called in for a moment at Turgenev’s. He went to Viardot’s and I to the Lvovs’. The Princess was there. I like her very much, and I think I’m a fool not to try to marry her. If she were to marry a very good man and they were very happy, I might be driven to despair.

27 March/8 April, Paris – Ambérieu57    Got up at 8 and called on Turgenev. Both times, when saying goodbye to him, I’ve cried about something as I left him. I like him very much. He has made, and is continuing to make a different man of me. Set off at 11. It was dull on the train. But when I transferred to the stage-coach at night a full moon shone on the seats. Everything stood out and was suffused with love and joy. For the first time in a long while I sincerely thanked God again that I was alive.

29 March/10 April, Geneva    Woke up early, felt well and almost cheerful except for the vile weather. Went to church, found no service on, was too late to prepare for communion, did some shopping and went to the Tolstoys’. Alexandrine Tolstaya had become very religious, as they all have, I think. Le Bocage – delightful. Read Cousine Bette all day, but behaved in an orderly manner. Noted down five headings.58 At twenty-eight I’m still a silly little boy.

31 March/12 April    Read the Gospels, went to the baths, caught cold. The Tolstoys carried me off to their house. I abused Totleben – that’s bad!59 Read Balzac. Alexandrine has a wonderful smile. […]

3/15 April    Got up late – the baths. Read the foreword60 to the Comédie Humaine there: trivial and presumptuous. Read a bit of the history of the revolution and Émile Girardin’s Liberté61 – shallow, though honest. […] Good, but doesn’t lead anywhere. Wrote a little. Thought a lot. Must do three things: (1) educate myself, (2) work at poetry and (3) do good. And must check on these three things every day.

5/17 April    I think I’ve finally thought out The Fugitive. Went to the doctor’s, ordered some things. The baths. The holy shroud. Mariya is well built. Read Liberté. Went to confession. A good thing in any case. Received a letter from Auntie.

6/18 April    Woke up at 9. Took communion. Read Liberté at home, and Balzac and a newspaper at the baths. […] Read the history and constitution of Switzerland. Went out in a boat. I think The Fugitive is quite ready. I’ll get down to it tomorrow. If I fall asleep, I won’t go to church.

7/19 April    Slept badly, as though afraid of being late somewhere. At 9 went to the baths, and at home read a history of France. Went to hear a sermon by Martin. Clever, but dreadfully cold. Wrote an outline.62 Dined hurriedly and went with the Pushchins63 to the Tolstoys’. Twice met Mariya. Not bad-looking, but super ciliously polite. The Pushchins are delightfully good-natured. Meshchersky64 may be of use to me, I’ll go and see him. Was a terrible democrat – to no purpose. Flirted with an Englishwoman – also to no purpose.

8/20 April    Got up early. Baths. Read La Dame aux perles.65 He’s talented, but the ground he tills is dreadful. Balzac’s depravity is like a flower garden by comparison. Church. Felt cheerful. […]

18/30 April    Got up early, went for a walk, read about the disgusting behaviour of the English towards China66 and argued about it with an elderly Englishman. Wrote a bit of The Cossack as poetry, which seemed better to me; I don’t know which to choose. Read a history of the revolution67 all day.

19 April/1 May    Got up at 8. My eye is bothering me very much. The doctor came. Read Tocqueville’s history of the revolution all day. […]

20 April/2 May    My eye still aches. Read Sarrut’s68 history and the Idées Napoléoniennes69 all day; didn’t touch a pen. […]

22 April/4 May    Got up at 9, wrote a little note to Annenkov, roamed about and didn’t even read. The Englishwoman Dora – ‘nothing, nothing, silence’! Her neck, her arm, her laugh! Walked to Montreux, met Galakhova, also ‘nothing’, Spring. My eye is better. […]

23 April/5 May    Got up late. Did literally nothing all day. In the morning I walked to Montreux and to the baths. A charming, blue-eyed Swiss girl. Wrote a reply to a letter I received from Turgenev. The English are a morally naked people and go about like that without any shame. […]

25 April/7 May    Wrote a little of The Deranged One70 from the beginning again. At the baths the Galakhov girls tormented me. It’s so dirty there, the soap has no effect. […]

29 April/11 May, Geneva.    To the doctor’s. A vulgar raisonneur. To the Tolstoys’, in a cheerful mood, went with them to Salève. Very enjoyable. I’m so ready to fall in love, it’s terrible. If only Alexandrine were ten years younger! A wonderful nature. […]

6/18 May    […] Princess Meshcherskaya is dangerous. I’m afraid I’m already to blame, and this feeling, together with the pleasure and awareness of the charm of a pretty young woman, kept me awake a long time.

12/24 May, Clarens    Got up at 8, read Sarrut all day. A mass of thoughts, happy thoughts artistically, especially for the story about a Russian woman. Went to Zybina’s funeral in the evening. The prayers touched me. Love is suffocating me – both physical and ideal love. Mariya Yakovlevna71 is charming. I’m extremely interested in myself. I even love myself because there is so much love for others in me.

16/28 May, Les Avants – Gessenay    Got up at 4. Set off via the Jaman pass. A pleasant walk, but the youngster72 gets on my nerves. Reached Allières, nice and comfortable. A primitive chalet. Montbovon; ‘Genevievka’ disturbed me. Roman Catholic poetry! Unpacked my books, but did no writing. A pain in my chest. Set off walking to Château D’Oex; given a lift by a chaste miller. A stony stream – you couldn’t tell the water from the stones. Drove to Gessenay. An angry dark-haired gentleman. An excessively rude office clerk.

17/29 May, Gessenay – Interlaken    […] In a boat to Neuhaus. Delightful waterfalls, grottoes and castles. On foot to Interlaken; rye, milk, sweets. Health better. Drinking no wine.

18/30 May, Interlaken    Unwell. Woke at 7. Walked to Böningen. Handsome people – the women especially. They begged for alms. Rain. Wrote a bit of The Cossack. Read about the Sevastopol campaign. The maid troubles me. Thank God for my bashfulness. Sasha bores me. Wrote a bit of The Demented One in the evening; went to the doctor’s. Wrote to Auntie yesterday.

20 May/1 June, Grindelwald. 2 June    Went to the glacier with Boren, sent him to fetch my things, wrote a description of the journey, went to a second glacier. […] A terrible bill. Some English people arrived. Sensuality torments me terribly. Couldn’t sleep before midnight and paced up and down my room and the corridor. Walked along the balcony. The glaciers and black mountains in the moonlight. Pawed the downstairs maid, and the upstairs one too. She ran past several times and I thought she was waiting for me; everyone was in bed; she ran past again and gave me an angry look. I heard a noise downstairs; I’d roused the whole house; they took me for a malfaiteur. […]

23 May/4 June, Leissigen – Bern. 5 June    Left Leissigen at 7. A stone-carter gave us a lift. A little inn; terrible extortion; another pretty girl. From Spiez to Thun on foot. Heimatlose [homeless people]. They were travelling with children and a dog, comfortably and in good spirits. A shoemaker with a sallow, sickly family. Gliedersucht [rheumatic pains]. Dinner in Thun with eighteen pastors. A pretty maid in the Pinten Wirtschaft. Reached Bern. Thought of writing to L. Karamzina73 – must get married, must have a corner of my own to live.

24 May/5 June, Bern – Clarens. 6 June    Left Bern at 8. Flat country with rye fields and woods as far as Fribourg. A 30-year-old American; he’d been to Russia. Mormons in Utah. Jos Smith, their founder, was lynched to death. Prices the same in all the inns. Hunting of buffles [buffaloes] and cerfs [stags]. I’d like to go there. Abolitionists. Beecher Stowe. Reached Vevey. Invited him to join us, but he wouldn’t come. Finished the journey on foot, sad and empty. Began a letter to L. Karamzina, but didn’t finish it.

26 May/7 June, Clarens    Got up at 8, have a sore lip. In the morning I wrote a splendid diary of my journey.74 […]

27 May/8 June    Got up at 8, felt unwell. Wrote one sheet of The Demented One and letters to Nekrasov and Karamzina. I bathe twice a day and go rowing. Received letters from Turgenev, Nekrasov, Botkin and Druzhinin. Some neat and tidy, sniffling Englishwomen have arrived.

30 May/11 June    Broke a mirror. This omen was the last straw! I was weak enough to try guessing my fortune in a dictionary. Came up with the words soles, water, catarrh and grave. Read The Neighbours75 all morning. Poor as a work of art, but plenty of nice, sympathetic talent and poetry. […]

31 May/12 June, Clarens – Geneva.    Went up to Blonay in the morning. Delightful. A quite modern oval fountain and magnificent old terraces, splintered chestnut trees and decaying stalls. Left for Geneva. […]

1/13 June, Geneva – Chambery.    […] Set off at 6 for Chambery with a Savoyard, a playful, gentle stalwart Frenchman with a dog.

2/14 June, Chambery – Lans-le-Bourg.    Slept till 12. By train and on to Lans-le-Bourg with a drunken Piedmontese and a red-haired conductor with big eyes and a sardonic smile. Wanted to paw the woman next to me,76 but was too hesitant to succeed.

4/16 June, Turin.    Overslept and missed Genoa. Went to two museums – arms and statues – and to the Chamber of Deputies. We all77 had a splendid dinner together. Went for a walk. I dragged them all to a brothel and left. Druzhinin stayed. Went to a concert to hear the Ferni sisters. The best Sardinian society was there. Had a pleasant chat with Druzhinin and went to bed late. Botkin has a silent hatred of Druzhinin.

5/17 June, Turin – Saint Martin.    Woke up early, had a bathe, dropped in at the Athenaeum. I feel envious of this young, vigorous, free life. We went to a café. One could live, and live well, anywhere here. […]

7/19 June, Gressoney.    Couldn’t sleep before 12. Terrible agitation. Rain; we didn’t go out. Offered someone five francs, but apparently she wasn’t a whore. An ugly creature, but I wanted her very much. Wrote a couple of sheets of The Cossack. Read the enchanting Goethe’s Meeting and parting.78 […]

8/20 June, Gressoney – Chambave.    Left at 6. Ascent to the chapel. Meeting with a handsome singer. View of the Aosta valley and the mountain range. Descent; fragrance. Meeting with a godfather and godmother. Fragrance of rye, nectar, grass and warm dung. Brusson. A second ascent. A poor woman begging. Gave her half a franc. La! A pine forest; alone by a stream. A second view of the Aosta valley. Chestnut trees and nuts. A hollow basin with vineyards. St Vincent, a pretty tobacco worker, the waters, a casino. We travelled like gentlemen. On foot to Chambave. Ruins.

11/23 June, Evionnaz – Clarens.    Got up at 7. Coffee made of boot polish. Waitress cried because I complained about the coffee. Went by stage-coach to Villeneuve with a sociable consumptive précepteur [tutor] and a portly man recruiting soldiers for Naples. Talked about what use the Swiss are in Naples. Had a long trip in a boat and came back tired out. Went by boat to Chillon. Tea at the Hôtel Byron. Good, but not complete without women. Got back late and slept well.

15/27 June    Got up at 9, still unwell; haemorrhoids. Mustn’t drink wine and must keep all the time to a diet that isn’t too hot. Made some cigarettes and had a pleasant chat with Druzhinin. Wrote a bit of The Lost One. Slept after dinner, then went to Villeneuve and the Hôtel Byron. A freckled beauty. I want a woman terribly. A pretty one.

18/30 June, Clarens – Geneva.    […] Despite a headache I went for a walk. A pathetic creature. Comme si vous faisiez la chanté, je vous jure, je vous promets [it’s just as if you were to give alms, I swear to you, I promise you], and I, beast that I am …!

22 June/4 July, Geneva – Bern.    Woke up at 9, hurried to the steamer. A crowd, the like of which I’ve never seen before. A young, curly-headed Swiss lad – spoke pure French, told lies, mixed things up, but all fluently. Rousseau was a Freemason. Different types: (1) angular Germans with broad cheek-bones and brooches on the side of their shirt-fronts; (2) slender Parisian Frenchmen; (3) stout, stalwart Swiss. The railway journey. Shouts, garlands and welcomes for the travelling lords and masters – the people. Dinner with a courier. A travelling school of girls and boys with a ruddy, perspiring, high cheek-boned master. Frenchmen in another carriage, wanting to faire la noce [have a good time] everywhere. An enchanting moonlight night; the drunken shouts, the crowd and the dust didn’t spoil the charm; a valley, moist and bright in the moonlight; I could hear the sounds of corn-crakes and frogs from there, and something seemed to draw me in that direction. But if I should go, I would be drawn further afield again. It’s not with pleasure that my soul responds to the beauty of nature, but with a kind of sweet pain. It was nice as far as Bern; the people in the carriage were asleep; I looked out of the window and was in that happy frame of mind in which I know I can be no better. Found an apartment in the Couronne.79 The entry of riflemen to the sound of music made me sad.

25 June/7 July, Lucerne    Woke up at 9 and walked to a pension and the lion monument. At home I opened my notebook, but couldn’t write anything. I’ve abandoned The Hunting Ground. A stupid and boring dinner. Went to a privathaus. On my way back from there at night – it was overcast with the moon breaking through – I heard some wonderful voices, two bell-towers in a broad street, and a little man singing Tyrolean songs to a guitar – it was splendid. I gave him something and invited him to sing in front of the Schweizerhof – it was no use, he went away shamefacedly, muttering something to himself, and the crowd followed him and laughed. Previously, however, there had even been a crowd of people on the balcony, listening in silence. I overtook him and invited him to the Schweizerhof for a drink. We were taken into another room. The singer was a commonplace, but pathetic person. We drank, the waiter laughed and the porter sat down. This exasperated me – I swore at them and got terribly agitated.80 The night was wonderful. What do I want, what do I passionately desire? I don’t know – only not the good things of this world. And how can one not believe in the immortality of the soul when one feels in one’s own soul such immeasurable grandeur? I looked out of the window. Darkness, broken clouds and light. I could happily die!

My God! My God! What am I? Where am I going? And where am I now?

27 July/9 July    Got up early and feel fine. Had a bathe. I’m more than pleased with my new apartment; got on with Lucerne and wrote a letter to Botkin before dinner. Got Freytag’s Soll und Haben and Andersen’s Improvisatore and read them,81 went out in a boat and walked to a monastery. I’m terribly shy in the pension; there are a lot of pretty women. I sat with a German. A crafty tradesman who had given his children a better education than he had had himself. A deaf old man, and a pathetic story of a daughter seduced.

28 June/10 July    […] Finished reading Freytag. Poor. There can be no poetry in methodicalness.

29 June/11 July, Lucerne – Sarnen    Got up at 7 and had a bathe. Got on with Lucerne till dinner. It’s good. One must be bold, otherwise one can’t say anything except what is graceful, and I’ve a lot to say that is new and worthwhile. Sat with an artist at dinner, struck up a conversation with him, abused the Genevese, and he turned out to be one. What of it? I spoke sincerely. He’s a nice fellow, I think, but our conversation was quietly ill-tempered. Set off for a couple of days’ walking. Two Englishmen on the steamer. One was a teacher, the other his brother, an artist, I think, and I travelled with them via Stanstad to Alpnachstad. There were eleven English men and women there, for whom I acted as interpreter. Rapacity.82  A bad-tempered Scotsman. A dull hotel in Sarnen, but the English and I chatted and made music. Slept badly. Here again one begins to see balding women with goitres, cretins, white-haired and self-satisfied. They wear their plaits here tied up in a bun with an enormous pin. The people are blond and plain.

30 June/12 July, Sarnen – Beckenried    Woke up at 9. Some Germans from Bern; we talked about hunting in the Vaterland.83 Had a bathe. Good-natured coarseness of the Germans. Set off on foot; cretins. Nice people, good-natured in a playfully cretinous way. An old woman with a parasol. Girls. Two girls from Stans flirted with me, one of them with wonderful eyes. I had bad thoughts and was immediately punished – by shyness. A wonderful church with an organ, full of pretty women. Masses of sociable and fairly pretty ones. A wonderful eating-house, surprisingly cheap. […]

2/14 July, Rigi-Kulm – Lucerne    Got up at 3. A filthy bed with bugs. The same stupid view of nature and of people. Englishmen in blankets, with Murrays84 and maps. ‘Ah!’ they exclaimed, when the sun appeared. However, there was one moment of poetry yesterday when in the midst of a boundless sea of mist the fiery ball of the sun seemed to stop for some reason here and not there. The people are like ants – put a hillock in front of them and they’ll crawl up it. I set off with the Englishmen. I think I beat the Pole. Wonderful views below. Finished the journey by boat. The landlady’s daughter struts about. She’s too grand. I’m dying for lack of sleep. Had a bathe. Dozed off before dinner. Got angry at dinner with a Frenchman over something. Really, nothing can be more stupid than a comme il faut Frenchman. Slept, had a bathe, and went to Lucerne by boat. The Englishwoman has cleaned herself up and is nice and charming. Then I met the little one, but ran away from her. Had supper with the pastor and his family. A wonderful man.

4/16 July    Got up at 7; a dog woke me up and I let it out. Wrote a bit and went to Sasha’s.85 What are we to do? It’s dull. The heat is exhausting. After dinner I wrote as much as I could despite the heat, and read Wilhelm Meister and Miss Brontë.86  The day before yesterday I received a letter from Turgenev, a nice tranquil one, and a disgruntled one from Botkin. Replied to them today, but I won’t send them. Roamed around in the evening; a cretin woman. Returned at night – Mendelssohn from the pension window. Is it possible that the tears of Sehnsucht [longing] which I often shed will cease as the years go by? […]

11/23 July, Friedrichshafen – Stuttgart    Got up at 7; had a bathe. Went to the Summer Palace. Endearing poverty, and repulsive primness and courtly atmosphere. […] Had some excellent thoughts while reading. Two quite different things: The Cossack – as primitive and fresh as a biblical legend, and The Hunting Ground – very lively comedy; I must concentrate on types, all sharply defined.

Had a splendid view of the moon on my right. Very important – the idea occurred to me, clearly and forcibly, of starting a school in the country for the whole neighbourhood, and of general activity of that kind. The most important thing is constant activity. […]

14/26 July, Baden-Baden    Ill in the morning; roulette till 6. Lost everything. Dined at home, quite ill. In the evening, I looked on quite calmly at all this depravity and confusion, but am weak and ill. The young people in neck-ties avoid me. Went home, but the Frenchman kept me awake till 3, jabbering about his political plans, and about poetry and love. Horrible! I’d rather be without a nose, stinking and goitrous, the most dreadful cretin, the most repulsive abortion, than such a moral abortion.

15/27 July    Borrowed 200 roubles from the Frenchman, and lost it all. […]

20 July/1 August    Yet another worthless day; borrowed money from Turgenev and lost it. Nothing has nagged at me so much for a long time. Received letters from Seryozha. Masha and Valeryan have separated. This news overwhelmed me. Vanechka87 is nice. And I feel ashamed in his presence.

24 July/5 August, Eisenach – Dresden    Arrived at 9. Unwell. The town is nice. Went to the baths and walked back. Pushchin. He’s lost much of his charm away from Switzerland. Went round to the art gallery. The Madonna88 at once moved me deeply. Slept till 4. The theatre – a comedy by Gutzkow.89 Germanic in tentness. […]

25 July/6 August, Dresden    Health still worse. Went round the bookshops and the music shops; my eyes stood out on pegs. Chose some music and books and went back to the gallery, but everything left me cold except the Madonna. […]

30 July/11 August, on the steamer to Petersburg    Cards again. Arrived at 2. Borrowed money in embarrassment from Pushchin. Found nobody in Petersburg except the Kolbasins. No money. Went to Nekrasov’s. Disgusting stupidity – said nothing about money.

2 August, Petersburg    Stayed in and read. Saltykov90 – a talent to be taken seriously. Health poor.

6 August    Decided to leave. Got everything done, for good or ill. Left at 9. Russia is disgusting. I simply don’t like it. Health better.

8 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up at 4. The horses didn’t come till 5. Set off, and met Vasily half-way. Reached Yasnaya at 11. ‘I welcome you, my …’.91 Delightful Yasnaya! Felt both sad and happy; but Russia disgusts me and I feel this coarse, deceitful life surrounding me on all sides. At the station Zorin was being thrashed, and I wanted to intercede, Vasily explained to me that first I would have to bribe the doctor. And he told me of many such things. Beatings and floggings. This is how I defined my purpose in life on the journey: first of all literary work, then family duties, then the estate – but I must leave the estate in the hands of the headman, and try as far as possible to lighten the load, make things better, take only 2,000 roubles for myself, and use the rest for the peasants. My chief stumbling block is the vanity of liberalism. But like Titus92 – I’ll do one good deed a day, and that will be sufficient.

9 August, Pirogovo    Got up at 9. Health bad. The headman deeply despises me, and it’s hard for me to do anything with him. Sashka stole some butter. I summoned him to see me. ‘I don’t know what happens when I’ve had a drink.’ He said his feet were suppurating, but the headman said: ‘It serves you right.’ I admonished him and then gave him something. It was stupid, but what else could I do? Went to Pirogovo. The poverty of the people and the sufferings of the animals are dreadful. […]

13 August    […] Read a bit of Brontë; wrote a letter to Turgenev. Started allowing the domestic serfs to buy their freedom.

15 August    Felt all right all day. Read The Iliad.93 That’s the thing! Wonderful! Wrote to Ryabinin. I must revise the whole of The Caucasian Tale.94 Not many of the peasants want to transfer to quit-rent. […]

16 August    In the morning, Vasily Davydkin. I gave him three roubles. The Iliad. Good, but no more. Went for a walk round the mill and thought about the estate. Prince Yengalychev. Cunning, stupid, uneducated but good-natured. Went riding and killed a hare. At home, attended to estate business. Wrote a little note to Auntie; increased the headman’s wages. Sensuality torments me; laziness again, boredom and sadness. Everything seems stupid. The ideal is unattainable; I’ve already ruined myself. Work, a modest reputation, money. What for? Material enjoyment – again, what for? There will soon be eternal night. I keep thinking I’ll die soon. I’m too lazy to write in detail; I’d like to write all the time in fiery outlines. Love. I’m thinking of a novel of that sort.95

17 August    Only read The Iliad and intermittently attended to estate business. Went hunting, and to the Yengalychevs’. It’s sad and gloomy in that house – no memories. Came back at 1. The Iliad is making me completely rethink The Fugitive.

18 August    Got up late, health quite good; but in the morning I lost my temper and called someone a blockhead. It’s terrible! Before you know it, you’ve come to grief again. Read The Iliad. Seryozha came; we had a pleasant chat. I’ve thought out The Hunting Ground completely, but I’m altogether dissatisfied with the Caucasian tale. I can’t write without an idea. But the idea that good is good in every sphere, that the same passions exist everywhere and that the primitive state is good, isn’t enough. It would be a good thing, though, if the latter work could inspire me. It’s the only solution.

26 August    Health so-so. Estate business in the morning. It’s bad in all respects, but most of all because it’s dragging me once again into the serfdom rut. I don’t want the torment of introducing something new. Decided to buy land in Baburino.96 After dinner the threshing began. Zyabrev has turned down my offer; read Koltsov.97 Charm and immense power. Gave five men their letters of freedom. God only knows what will happen, but to make things better for people, even without getting any gratitude at all, is still something, and leaves its mark in one’s soul. I’m setting off tomorrow at daybreak.98

28 August    I’m twenty-nine. Got up at 7. Mashenka was going to Spasskoye. This angered me: she’s going on her own.99 We met rather coldly. Auntie is right that Masha isn’t to blame for having a taste for that milieu; but she does have a taste for that repulsive milieu.

Seryozha has left. He and I are becoming more and more friendly. The main thing is to find the right string to play on with a man, and to let him do the same with you. […] Read the second part of Dead Souls; it’s rather clumsy. I must write nothing except The Hunting Ground, and put Auntie in it. I’m going to the Gorchakovs’ tomorrow.

29 August, en route from Pirogovo to Verkhoupye. Started at 6. […] Finished reading the unbelievably delightful ending of The Iliad. […] Read the Gospels, which I haven’t done for a long time. After The Iliad. How could Homer not have known that goodness is love! It’s a revelation! There is no better explanation. […]

1 September, Pirogovo    Got up at 9, aching and with a sore throat. Read Kozlov and the Thoughts;100 they’re good. His boldness is forced – that’s his big defect.

2 September    Got up early, tried to write, couldn’t get on with The Cossack. Read a stupid French novel. Went riding after dinner. I’m quite well. Mashenka’s nature is egotistical, spoilt and narrow. Wrote to my brothers.

3 September, Yasnaya Poly ana    […] Set off for Yasnaya but found nothing. The sale of the wood is starting. I’ve no money. My youth is past! I say this in a good sense. I’m calm and there’s nothing I want. I even write calmly. It’s only now that I’ve come to understand that I don’t need to organise the life around me symmetrically, the way I want it, but I need to take myself apart, make myself flexible, in order to adapt myself to any sort of life.

6 September    The estate again, which I’ve become very much involved in. Rode out with the dogs but didn’t find anything, and was bored. Dined alone and tried to read Hackländer101 – nasty, mal fait and lacking in talent. As for my own writing, I’ve decided that my chief fault is timidity. I must be bold. Wrote two sheets of The Lost One in the evening. Slept badly, sensual excitement.

8 September, Sunday    Called the peasants together. Yukhvan is fifty-five. They all looked at me in alarm, but they’re good people. Makarychev told me about his brother’s stealing and perjury. Dined alone. Went for a ride. Gimbut is swindling me. Wrote a little and felt in the mood for writing. Sent a reply to Kolbasin. Read Gogol’s letters recently received. As a man he was simply trash. Terrible trash.

24 September    Got up late. Bad-tempered. Scolded Yakov. Abominable! Wonderful weather. Wrote a little. I’ve let myself go terribly in all respects. So many unresolved problems. The charge for the use of land: should I increase it or not? etc. Rode to Gimbut’s. Flirted with MN. Khmelnitsky is a gifted and clever chatterbox. He spoke about farming in the Volga district and about that region. It smacks of Koltsov’s poetry. At home Klara – she filled me with disgust. […]

5 October    Worked on the estate; no labourers. A mass of expenses; I’m getting despondent. Went for a ride, wrote a bit in the evening. Expected a woman – she didn’t come.

19 October, Moscow102    Busy in the morning. Dined at the club; boring; besides, I’m not well. Evening at the Aksakovs’. Disgusting literary atmosphere.

21 October    In the morning, decided about lodgings, went for a walk and dined at Fet’s. He, too, is ambitious and poor. Went to the Aksakovs’ with him. To the theatre and to the Arsenyevs’. Yesterday was at the Behrs’. Lyubochka103 is awful – balding and frail. Misfortunes on all sides. And God, how old I am! Everything bores me, nothing disgusts me, I’m even fairly satisfied with myself, but everything leaves me cold. I don’t desire anything, and I’m prepared to eke out this joyless existence as best I can. Only why, I don’t know. What is strange is not that God ordained that a piece of bread should be His Son’s flesh; 100,000 times more strange is the fact that we live and don’t know why; that we love good, but that nowhere is it written: ‘This is good, that is evil.’

22 October, Petersburg    Set off for Petersburg; almost missed the train. The Arsenyevs and Talyzin104 were there. I don’t much like him. In the morning, I called on the Minister,105 saw Zelenoy and for some reason was embarrassed. To Nekrasov’s – depressing. To Annenkov’s – nice. Dined at the club with Kovalevsky. Evening at the Tolstoys’. Alexandrine is charming – a joy and a comfort. I’ve never seen a woman who could hold a candle to her. Alexandra Petrovna in the evening; it’s too late, she’s got wrinkles.

29 October    Caught the Minister in. Didn’t manage to talk about the matter properly. Dined at Shostak’s.106 Perovsky’s story.107 Alexandrine is charming. Evening with them.

30 October, Moscow    Had a talk with Kolbasin and set off. The Death of Pazukhin108is an impossible abomination. Yushkov. A despot and a fool. Dolgorukov, an ageing society man, and poor Meshchersky on their way from Paris to the Caucasus. The news of Orlov’s marriage to Trubetskaya aroused sadness and envy in me. Arrived tired and with a heavy cold and ’flu. Mashenka kept talking about herself, and didn’t ask a word about me. Still she was affectionate towards me. Never mind. Slept during the day. Read N. S. Tolstoy’s book.109 Wonderful. And Yershov’s Sevastopol110 is good. I mean to stay in and write. Petersburg saddened me at first, but then quite restored me. My reputation has fallen, or is just about surviving, and I felt greatly saddened at heart, but now I’m more composed; I know I have something to say and the strength to say it forcefully; so the public can say what it likes for all I care. But it’s necessary to work conscientiously and apply all one’s strength – then let them spit on the altar.111

6 November    […] Alexandrine is charming. She is definitely the woman who charms me more than any other. Talked to her about marriage. Why didn’t I tell her everything? […]

7 November    […] In the evening, I read Don Quixote and went to the baths.

8 November    […] Went to the Sukhotins’. Was awkward with everyone except Alexandra Alexeyevna.112 She’s excellent. Got home after 1.

11 November    Went to the Trustee Council and to Ostrovsky’s. He’s cold. Gymnastics. Fet came to dinner. He read Antony and Cleopatra,113 and by his talk kindled my ardour for art. I must begin The Cossack dramatically. Can’t sleep.

14 November    Eureka!    For The Cossacks – both killed.114 […]

17 November    Went out with Seryozha; dined at home. Evening at the Aksakovs’; terrible pride. I argued about Gogol to no purpose.

24 November    Got on with The Lost One. Went to Tytucheva’s.115 Felt terribly awkward for some reason. Splendid dinner at home. Finished writing The Dream116 – it’s not bad. […]

25 November    Got up early, revised The Lost One. Gymnastics improving a bit. After dinner did some more revising, and finished it. The whole second half is weak.

27 November    Read The Dead Lake.117 Trash. […]

1 December    […] Evening at the Dyakovs’. Wonderful sisters. Alexandrine has me on a string and I’m grateful to her for it. However in the evenings I’m passionately in love with her, and return home full of something – happiness or sadness – I don’t know which.

3 December    Wrote a little. Dined at Fet’s. Something still not right. Antony and Cleopatra. Translation bad. The theatre; all the time with Alexandrine. To tea with them. Told her about my bewilderment. She likes my bewilderment. A discussion with Mikhail Mikhaylovich118 about socialism.

4 December    […] Dinner at the Sukhotins’. She was anxiously feeling her way with me. All the same I love her and am foolish when I’m with her. […]

11, 12, 13–26 December    A few unenjoyable balls. A few ‘Nadya’119 soirées, pleasant but equivocal. Latterly they’ve been dull. Revised The Musician. I’ll publish it. Twice went to the gipsies’.

26 December    Got up at 12, wanted to work a bit when Ostrovsky came, then Sergius120 with the gipsies: ‘broad’ natures – rubbish! Then the Aksakovs. Talk about the dinner.121 We dined at home; Auntie tried to prove the usefulness of torture – because the children had been given a fright. […]

28 December    Kryukov and Bakhmetev. Visits. Sukhotina is very nice. The Olsufyevs spoke a lot about me. Annoying. The dinner is on the tip of everyone’s tongue – all the speeches trivial except Pavlov’s. Konstantin Aksakov is very nice and kind. At the Sushkovs’. B. was very nice, but reserved. Rayevsky was disgusting.

29, 30, 31 December    Ball at the Bobrinskys’. I’m beginning to like Tyutcheva in a quiet way. Wrote down Nikolenka’s dream.122 No one agrees, but I know that it’s good.

Notes

1 The Emperor’s New Clothes. The translation has not survived.

2 A so-called ‘Literary Fund’ to help writers in need.

3 His articles on Pushkin, eleven in all.

4 A performance intended to raise money for the Literary Fund.

5 Possibly F. M. Tolstoy, a music critic and composer.

6 Belinsky’s fifth article, which deals particularly with Pushkin’s lyric poetry.

7 A German who came to Petersburg as a professional violinist and whose life history, as recounted to Tolstoy, formed the basis of the latter’s story Albert (originally called The Lost One).

8 To go abroad.

9 This entry refers to the story Albert in its early stages.

10 This plan came to nothing.

11 Panayev’s wife was to be the ‘George Sand woman’ in the comedy.

12 A chapter from Aksakov’s book (The Childhood Years of Grandson Bagrov) which dealt with his own childhood in fictional form.

13 Tolstoy wrote enthusiastically about Ostrovsky’s comedy to Botkin on 29 January 1857 (Letters, I, 92).

14 The wife of the statesman Baron Mengden and a well-known hostess and close friend of the Tolstoy family (Letters, I, 275).

15 One of the daughters of the poet Tyutchev whom Tolstoy greatly admired. It was rumoured in 1858 that Tolstoy intended to marry her. She never married and devoted much of her life to ‘good works’, especially public education and health, as well as writing a children’s version of the Bible.

16 En route for Paris via Warsaw.

17 In French in the original.

18 Some material for publication by Herzen in London, which Kolbasin wanted Tolstoy to take abroad with him.

19 A distinguished lawyer, historian and liberal politician, who met and corresponded frequently with Tolstoy (Letters, I, 132).

20 Tolstoy spent most of February and March in Paris.

21 Or rather a room in a pension in the Rue de Rivoli, where Turgenev also stayed for some time.

22 Prince N. A. Orlov, the son of Prince A. F. Orlov, head of the Third Section and a personal friend of Nicholas I. The son held a number of diplomatic posts abroad, including Paris, and later married Princess Trubetskaya, whom Tolstoy was fond of.

23 To 206 Rue de Rivoli from the Hôtel Meurice where he had first stayed on arriving in Paris.

24 Princess Alexandra Lvova, who was staying with her uncle whom Tolstoy had known for a long time. Tolstoy frequently visited her in Paris, was attracted to her and was even advised to marry her by his cousin Alexandra Tolstoy.

25 Napoleon III’s recent speech extolling French successes achieved during his reign.

26 An account of his journey from Russia, which has not survived.

27 Tolstoy saw Molière’s comedy at the Théâtre français.

28 A comedy by Mélesville, also on at the Théâtre français.

29 A French actress who had previously performed in Petersburg, and was acting at the time in Marivaux’s play.

30 It would seem that Tolstoy saw Molière’s play on the same day as Marivaux’s.

31 Tolstoy engaged both English and Italian teachers in Paris.

32 Balzac’s novel.

33 Tolstoy attended some lectures at the Sorbonne and the Collège de France on classical literature, political economy and international law.

34 Probably Beethoven’s Trio, opus 70.

35 The singer Pauline Viardot-Garcia, the great love of Turgenev’s life.

36 An opera singer.

37 A professor of political economy at the Collège de France.

38 A professor of international law at the same institution.

39 A professor of classical culture.

40 The collection of mediaeval arms and antiquities in the museum particularly interested Tolstoy.

41 Possibly a coinage of Tolstoy’s to denote a woman who accosts.

42 The Lost One (Albert).

43 Tolstoy and Turgenev went to Dijon at Turgenev’s suggestion and spent five days there.

44 The comic opera by Donizetti.

45 Daniel Douglas Home, the Scottish spiritualist and medium, whose seance at the Trubetskoys’ met with mixed success. He was in great demand in Europe, even by royalty, but is referred to unflatteringly in Robert Browning’s poem Sludge the Medium.

46 The recently opened operetta and light comedy theatre.

47 A one-act comedy by Cormon and Grangé.

48 Sergey.

49 Another recently opened theatre of light opera and pantomime.

50 A féerie or fairy play, performed at the circus.

51 The cemetery where many French writers and statesmen are buried.

52 La Cousine Bette.

53 A late eighteenth-century tragedy by the Italian poet Alfieri, based on the Greek legend of the unnatural love of Myrrha for her father Cinyras, king of Cyprus, the parents of Adonis.

54 She played the title role in the play.

55 Tolstoy wrote about it at some length in his letter to Botkin the same day (Letters, I, 95) and again many years later in A Confession.

56 For Geneva.

57 After leaving Paris Tolstoy continued his European travels for a further four months. He travelled from Paris to Ambérieu by train and from there to Geneva by stagecoach. In Geneva he renewed his acquaintance with his ‘Aunt’ Alexandra Tolstaya and spent a great deal of time with her, both at the villa Le Bocage where she was staying with the Grand Duchess Marya Nikolayevna, and on excursions into the neighbouring countryside. Before long he moved to Clarens, not far from Geneva, where he made friends with a small group of Russians – the Pushchins, Meshcherskys and Karamzins – as he mentioned in a letter to his aunt Tatyana Yergolskaya (Letters, I, 100). In the middle of May he travelled on foot round Switzerland with an eleven-year-old boy, Sasha Polivanov, the son of a Russian lady he knew in Clarens. Their journey, which took them through Montreux, Les Avants, Col de Jaman, Château d’Oex and back to Clarens via Interlaken, Grindelwald, Thun, Bern and Fribourg is described separately in Tolstoy’s Extract from a Diary, 1857: Notes on a Journey through Switzerland, but a few entries were also made in Tolstoy’s main diary and are included here. The journey lasted ten days from 15/27 May to 25 May/6 June, and shortly after his return Tolstoy set off again for Northern Italy where his friends Botkin and Druzhinin were staying. He joined them at Turin, where they spent some time sightseeing before returning to Clarens, partly on foot, through the Aosta valley and the St Bernard Pass. After a few days’ rest, Tolstoy set off for Lausanne, Bern and Lucerne, arriving in Lucerne on 24 June/6 July. It was during his stay there that the incident occurred which is described in Tolstoy’s story Lucerne. On 7/19 July he left Lucerne for Zurich, but soon moved on to Schaffhausen, Friedrichshafen, Stuttgart and Baden-Baden, where his heavy gambling losses and the news of the breakdown of his sister’s marriage made him decide to return to Russia. The final stage of his European journey took him through Frankfurt (where he saw Alexandra Tolstaya again), Dresden and Berlin. On 27 July/8 August he boarded a ship at Stettin and four days later was back in Petersburg.

58 Of stories he intended to work on in Geneva.

59 Totleben had been in command of the defences at Sevastopol and had until the previous month been convalescing in Switzerland from a wound received in the Crimean War.

60 The foreword to the 1842 edition of his novels which were published in seventeen volumes.

61 De la liberté de la presse et du journalisme. Girardin founded La Presse in 1836; it ushered in the age of the cheap newspaper in France.

62 Of The Fugitive.

63 M. I. Pushchin and his wife. M. I. Pushchin was the brother of the Decembrist friend of Pushkin’s.

64 Prince Meshchersky was married to the daughter of Karamzin and was living at the time in Switzerland.

65 A novel by Dumas fils.

66 A reference to the bombardment of Canton by the British navy in 1856 – also mentioned in Tolstoy’s story Lucerne.

67 Presumably L’Ancien régime et la révolution (1856).

68 A deputy of the Constituent Assembly in 1848 and an editor of La Tribune under Louis-Philippe, he wrote a six-volume Biographie des hommes du jour.

69 Written by Louis-Napoléon in London in 1838.

70 Another tentative title of Albert.

71 Pushchin’s wife.

72 Sasha Polivanov.

73 Yelizaveta Nikolayevna Karamzina, daughter of the historian and the sister of Meshchersky’s wife. She was staying at the time with the Meshchersky family, and Tolstoy was very attracted by her.

74 Extract from a Diary (see Note 57).

75 A novel (Grannarne, 1837) by the distinguished Swedish woman novelist, Frederika Bremer.

76 A conjectured reading for the initials which Tolstoy used in his diary.

77 Botkin, Druzhinin and Tolstoy.

78 Willkommen und Abschied, 1770.

79 Die Krone, a hotel in the outskirts of Bern.

80 See Tolstoy’s story Lucerne.

81 The title of Freytag’s novel which came out in 1855 is written in German in the diary and Tolstoy presumably read it in the original; the title of Hans Andersen’s novel is written in Russian but it is likely that he read it in a German translation.

82 In English in the original.

83 An alternative reading is Waadtland, a canton in the Pays du Vaud.

84 Guide-books published by John Murray.

85 Alexandra Tolstaya.

86 The title of Goethe’s novel is in Russian; ‘Miss Brontë’ is written in English and evidently refers to Mrs Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë.

87 Probably Ivan Turgenev, who had once been very friendly with Tolstoy’s sister Masha, who had just left her husband.

88 By Raphael.

89 Probably Ein weisses Blatt, a comedy by Karl Gutzkow, which had recently been revived on the Dresden stage.

90 Saltykov-Shchedrin, Russia’s best-known satirical writer and author of The Golovlyov Family (Letters, II, 389). Tolstoy was probably reading Saltykov’s Provincial Sketches at the time.

91 The first line of Pushkin’s poem The Village.

92 A reference to the Roman Emperor Titus who, according to Suetonius, considered the day wasted unless he had done a good deed.

93 In Gnedich’s translation.

94 The Cossacks.

95 Perhaps Family Happiness.

96 An estate very close to Yasnaya Polyana where Tolstoy opened a school in the 1860s.

97 Koltsov’s poems were included, together with those of Tyutchev and Fet, in the list of works which had made a great impression on him between the ages of twenty and thirty-five.

98 For Pirogovo, to go hunting.

99 Tolstoy feared a possible relationship between his sister and Turgenev.

100 Poems by Kozlov, and Koltsov’s Thoughts (Dumy).

101 Possibly the German writer’s novel Europäisches Sklavenleben.

102 On 16 October Tolstoy and his sister had left for Moscow.

103 His future mother-in-law.

104 Talyzin, a justice of the peace in Oryol, married Valeriya Arseneva the following year.

105 In connection with his scheme for afforestation in the Tula province.

106 Yekaterina Nikolayevna Shostak, at the time the headmistress of a school in Petersburg.

107 Alexandra Tolstaya told the story of how V. A. Perovsky (a son of Count Razumovsky with whom she had been in love) was taken prisoner by the French after Borodino – a story Tolstoy apparently made use of later when describing Pierre’s similar experience in War and Peace.

108 A comedy by Saltykov-Shchedrin.

109 Tolstoy’s second cousin’s book Sketches from beyond the Volga.

110 Yershov’s Sevastopol Memoirs first appeared in 1857. Yershov, an artillery officer, asked Tolstoy to write a foreword to the second edition in 1889, which he did, but for censorship reasons it was not published in Russia and first came out in England in 1902.

111 An allusion to Pushkin’s poem To a Poet.

112 Obolenskaya (née Dyakova). Tolstoy’s infatuation for her left its mark in an unfinished fragment.

113 His own translation of Shakespeare’s play.

114 Tolstoy later changed his mind again.

115 The reading Tyutcheva (the poet’s daughter) is preferred to Tyutchev, since the poet was not in Moscow at the time.

116 The musician’s dream in The Lost One.

117 A novel written jointly by Nekrasov and Panayeva.

118 M. M. Sukhotin, a member of the Moscow circuit court, married to Princess A. P. Golitsyna.

119 Tolstoy made up a Russian noun from Nadya (nadinstvo) which he sometimes used to refer to women’s tittle-tattle.

120 His brother Sergey.

121 A banquet given by liberally-minded intelligentsia to mark the Tsar’s rescript of November 1857, which laid the foundations for the reforms leading up to the emancipation of the serfs.

122 This probably refers to a dream related to Tolstoy by his brother Nikolay (a fragment entitled A Dream was published posthumously), and not to the musician’s dream mentioned in Note 116 above, although there are some similarities between the two.

1858

1 January, Moscow    Visits, at home, writing. Evening at the Sushkovs’. Katya1 is very sweet.

2, 3, 4, 5 January    Efforts to found a music society.2 […] Inexplicable impression of loathing left by Kokorev’s speech.3

6 January    To the Aksakovs’. Argument with the old man. Aristocratic feeling means a lot. But the main thing is – I feel myself a citizen, and if we are to have authority I want that authority to be in hands I respect. […]

7 January    […] Tyutcheva – nonsense!

8 January    No, not nonsense! Slowly but surely, she’s taking a complete hold of me.

15 January, Sogolevo4    […] Made a good start on Death.5

19 January, Moscow    Tyutcheva. She occupies me persistently. It’s even a nuisance, especially since it’s not love; it doesn’t have love’s charm. Got up at 8. Wrote letters, read a chapter. Nikolenka advised me to leave the tree in. Went for a walk with Nikolenka. Crowds. The Kremlin. The Behrs. At home with Chicherin. All philosophy, including his, is the enemy of life and poetry. The more true it is, the more generalised and cold; the more untrue, the sweeter it is. I’m not a political person, I say that to myself a thousand times. To the theatre. A Life for the Tsar.6 Chorus beautiful. To the club. Asya7 is rubbish.

20 January    Got up early. Thought and re-thought Three Deaths and wrote The Tree. It wouldn’t come out right at once. Went to gymnastics. Not bad. Spoke to M. Sukhotin sarcastically about K. Tyutcheva. Yet I think about her incessantly. What rubbish! Still I know that I only desire her love passionately, but have no pity for her. Mashenka is going to a masquerade. I argued with her bitterly and said I would go away. Things have begun to get better again with Seryozha. Looked through my diary today. How noticeably I’m falling off.

23 January    Wrote all morning, though I got up late. Didn’t go anywhere. Finished writing after lunch and read to Auntie, with tears in my eyes. To the Sverbeyevs’. Yeshevsky8 maliciously attacked Aksakov. Khomyakov was very feebly evasive. I went round to see him. The old coquette.

24 January    Got up late. Finished Three Deaths. Gymnastics. At home, an argument with Mashenka. Chicherin came. He’s too clever. Angrily abused the Slavophiles. I went with him to Korsh’s.9 He’s intelligent in a calm and superior way.

25 January    Got up at 10. Read in the morning. Went for a long walk. Dined at home. Auntie spoke about Mashenka. She’s right. To Fet’s. Felt glad and envious at observing his family happiness. A musical evening – delightful! Weber delightful. Tyutcheva, Sverbeyeva, Shcherbatova, Chicherina, Olsufyeva, Rebinder – I’m in love with them all. I felt sorry for Mashenka, and couldn’t get to sleep for happiness until 4 o’clock.

26 January    Dear Pushchin came. Had a walk; went to the puppet theatre with the children. Dined at Kireyeva’s.10 Went to Tyutcheva’s prepared to love her. She’s cold, petty, aristocratic. Rubbish! Chicherina is nice; very immature, I think. Kireyev is a good friend. The Government Inspector. Shchepkin11 is an austere actor. Drank with Pushchin. Went to a masquerade. Two masks. One from Samara [?] 100. I knew her. Revolting. The other was with Selivanov – hands, ears – interesting. Wrote to A. P.12

10, 11, 12 February    Chicherin said he loved me. It was after we’d had a drink at Chevalier’s. I’m grateful to him and proud of the fact. He’s very useful to me. But I still feel no strong attraction towards him.

13, 14, 15 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Spent the night at Chevalier’s before leaving. For half the night I had a wonderful talk with Chicherin. The other half I didn’t see, since I spent it with the gipsies till morning and in Goryachy.13 Went to Tula. Teeth still falling out. Worked yesterday on The Lost One. It’s beginning to take shape. Love – no!

16 February    Seryozha arrived yesterday. What a remarkable thing that my love of ideas is becoming a barrier between me and old friends. It’s a good arrangement for people to marry at thirty. All my people know me too well to love me. Worked again on The Lost One. I thought I’d finished, but I’ll revise it again. […]

17–18 February    Revised Albert a bit. And jotted down some ideas about punishments. Then did some reading. Read The Athenaeum. Revue des Deux Mondes. Montégut is a clever man. Hipocondriac14 is a wonderful thing. No half measures about it. Midsummernight’s Dream in English and Russian.15 Grigoryev is good. Brandt came and got on my nerves. My head still aches. Thoughts of approaching death torment me. I look at myself in the mirror for days on end. I’m working sluggishly. Must grit my teeth when it comes to physical and mental work.

19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 February, Moscow    Another three days in the country; spent them very well. The old beginning of The Cossacks is good; I got on with it a bit. […] I’m an emancipator!!! Through a snow-storm to Moscow. Gymnastics. The baths. Overate.

25 February    Got up early, read the journals – about Lord Grey.16 A poor thing by Nekrasov.17 Vargin, Auntie and arguments. I gave in. Went for a walk. Out of sorts. Dined without my brothers. Read Chicherin on the emancipation and Korsh on the reform. The former is bad. Wrote a sheet of The Cossacks. […]

26 February    Got up early. Wrote Yepishka’s story about the move from Greben.18  Not good. Chicherin and Vasenka19 came; I’m sweating and don’t feel well. Gymnastics. Dinner at the club. All this bores me, I’ve grown up a little. At home Mashenka was a bit better. I’m becoming a bit of a lone wolf. Went to my room, wrote to Alexeyev about the songs20 and replied to the circular from Nekrasov.21  Looked through The Musician again. I must rewrite it all, or let it go as it is. Got on with Yeroshka. Chikhachova. A clever coquette. I don’t feel well.

8, 9, 10 March    Went to Tyutcheva’s; neither one thing nor the other, she’s shy. Saw Shcherbatova at a concert and spoke to her. She’s nice, but less so. Tried to finish The Musician. Chicherin a Hellene, but a good man.

13 March    Dined at the Tolstoys’; Chicherin and I see a lot of each other. I respect and love science. Health better. Nothing to do in Petersburg.

14 March    Shenshin came in the morning. Not to me but to Chicherin, and this angered me. The Pushchins and Trubetskoy at the Tolstoys’. In the Hermitage – Ruysdael. Rubens’22 prodigal son with the rough back of his neck is good, also The Descent from the Cross. The Murillo not very. Steen’s composition is charming. […]

17 March, Petersburg – Moscow    Saltykov came and read. The Idealist23 is good. His is a wholesome talent. […]

19 March    In the morning I got on with The Cossacks. Toothache yesterday and today. Read St Beuve. Gymnastics. Fet. Wrote a little after dinner. Baths. Had supper with Nikolenka at Pechkin’s.24 The talk was about my being an egoist. Unpleasant and sad. But I’m to blame to some extent too.

20 March    Wrote a little, but continuing toothache distracts me. Read Chicherin’s article about British industry.25 Terribly interesting. For some time now every question has assumed enormous proportions for me. I’m much indebted to Chicherin. Nowadays with every new object or circumstance – apart from the specific conditions of that object or circumstance – I can’t help looking for its place in the eternal and the infinite, in history. Walked till 4. Did some writing at Mashenka’s and read half of L’oiseau and L’insecte by Michelet.26 Terribly profound in some places, and rubbish in others.

21 March    Excruciating toothache. Read Michelet. Wrote a few words to Turgenev. Went for a walk. Bought a barometer and some wallpaper. Had dinner. Wrote a bit. I’m completely absorbed by The Cossacks. The political excludes the artistic, because the former, in order to prove, must be one-sided. […] I’ve just read about the trial of Le [?]27 A foolish old man before an English court of law, and a barrister. The future revolution will be a revolution against the laws of reason and public institutions.

24 March    Got up late, rather ill. […] Finished reading L’insecte. Maudlin and affected. In the Literarisches Zentralblatt – a poem of the future about the unification of Germany, Emerson on Shakespeare and Goethe;28 in the Athenaeum – Dickens’ argument over the literary fund.29 Siege of Lucknow. Inhumanity of England.30  Dined at 7, soup. Auntie came. Wrote to Alexandrine Tolstaya and read La Chapelle’s Voyage.31 Read Montluc’s Commentaries.32 A good old Gasconard. Health better.

25 March    Wrote nothing. Read L’asino33 in the Athenaeum. Read Marcus Aurelius, his conception of the universe. Chicherin; an argument about railways and Christianity. Dinner at Chevalier’s; an argument with K. as well – I don’t understand paganism. Evening with the Chikhachovs.

26 March    Read splendid articles by Kokorev and by Solovyov – Buddhists.34 Was in good spirits, but had a long walk, caught cold and got toothache again. Geology is a deadly science.

27 March    Woken by Ostrovsky and Gorbunov; Ostrovsky is intolerable. Chicherin. Fet. An argument about Christ. Read geology at home. Went to Masha’s. She’s better and better. Read an American story.35 Wrote Easter Sunday36

28 March    Ostrovsky, Aksakov, Sukhotin. Complete idleness. Evening at the Sushkovs’. Alas, I was cold towards Tyutcheva. […]

I April    Got up at 10. Chicherin. Ill at ease with him. Christ gave no orders, but revealed a moral law which will always remain the criterion of good and evil. Went to Pikulin’s.37 Satin. They, the Westerners, fight shy of me. […]

9 April, Moscow – Yasnaya Polyana    Set off at dawn. Spring. New joys as you leave the town. Then toothache. Arrived at Yasnaya at night-time.

11 April    Slept uneasily; a nightmare and the philosophical theory of unconsciousness. Got up at 9. Read Zentralblatt and sorted out my papers and books. Walked for a bit, a muddle over the horses, dined alone, read Journal des Débats. Rigault is a clever man.38 No religion – but was there ever the one he demands? Gave someone a dressing down, went for a ride. I’ve already begun to be over-hasty in my decisions, and to be diffident … Played a little. Wrote letters to Chicherin, Nikolenka, Islavin and Merinsky. Wrote with enthusiasm the officer’s letter about the alarm.39

12 April    Got up, went for a walk. Scolded Yakov and was on the point of threatening some policemen. Bad – but it’s all due mainly to my teeth. At home, I read Wiseman on Popes Leo XII and Pius VIII.40 Wrote a bit. At dinner, I read Scènes de la vie américaine.41 Would be interesting to write a general criticism of the French novel. Wrote with a wealth of content, but carelessly. The escape to the mountains won’t come out right.42 Went for a ride. Things are up and down on the estate. I must get used to the fact that they are up and down. Played quite a lot, but carelessly.

13 April    Filthy weather. Read The Athenaeum. About the popes. Revue des Deux Mondes – some rubbishy little stories. Got held up over the escape to the mountains. Consequently wrote little. Went walking and riding. Played erratically. As I rode along the avenue, memories of childhood came flooding back.

14 April    I’ve just written a foolish letter to A. Tolstaya.43 Read the Débats. Walked for a little. Generally did nothing. On the other hand, I’ve cleared up the ending of the novel. The officer must stop loving her.44

20 April    A lovely day; the grass is pushing through and the last snow is melting. Was sad, and also glad … An owl flew by, flapping its wings, once or twice, then more and more often, before it came to rest.

21 April    A wonderful day. Peasant women in the garden and by the well. I’m like a man possessed … A letter from Chicherin. There’s something wrong.45 Petit, mon prince. He poured into it, or rather right over it, all his pent-up feelings.

25 April    […] In the morning I pottered about on the estate and re-read my army tales. The last ones are poor. Received letters from Alexeyev, Nikolenka, Druzhinin about a journal,46 Kolbasin and Alexandrine (her courtly, Christian sweetness is beginning to get on my nerves). Got on with the end of the letter47 – carelessly, but it’s coming on. Now I must revise it all during the summer.

26 April    Rode off early into the fields; was in a bad temper. Re-read and revised everything. Rode out in answer to a call from a soldier, but in vain. Dined, slept, walked into the fields … Put the finishing touches to The Cordon;48 many new thoughts. A Christian outlook. Played for about three hours – three chords of sixths to the accompaniment of nightingales – and enjoyed myself. Received a letter from Alexandrine about Three Deaths.

27, 28, 29, 30 April    […] I’ve been reading Macaulay49 and the newspapers these last few days. No, history is too cold for me. Re-read my Caucasian diary yesterday. I was wrong to imagine that I was such a nice young lad there. On the contrary. But still, as something that is over and done with, it was very good. Recalled a lot that will be useful for my Caucasian novel. I’ve reached the second part of the novel, but it’s so muddled that I’ll have to begin it all from the beginning or else write another second part.

1 May    Vile weather. Wrote nothing, but hit upon an important change. Maryana must be poor, just like Kirka.50 God knows why. […]

10, 11, 12, 13 May    A wonderful Whitsunday. Drooping bird-cherry in the workers’ calloused hands; the choking voice of Vasily Davydkin. Caught a glimpse of Aksinya.51 She’s very pretty. I’ve been waiting for her these last few days in vain. Today in the big old wood; the daughter in law; I’m a fool. A beast. Her neck is red from the sun. Went to Gimbut’s. I’m in love as never before in my life. I’ve no other thoughts. I’m tormented. Tomorrow – every effort.

Haven’t written my diary for nearly a month. Today is 12 June. All this time I’ve written nothing. I’ve been busy with the estate, but more with running about … Have been to Pirogovo. Fet. Nikolenka came for the day. Dismissed Vasily. Turgenev came yesterday. Judging by him I’ve grown up; I feel at ease with him. Read Three Deaths; it’s weak. I want to work, and above all I want order.

14 June    All day in the fields. A wonderful night. A dewy white mist. Trees in the mist. The moon behind the birch trees and a corncake; no more nightingales.

15, 16 June    […] All day at work. Health seems better. Had Aksinya …; but I’m repelled by her.

16 June to 19 July    I’m not writing, not reading, and not thinking. I’m wholly absorbed in the estate. The battle is still in full swing. The peasants are trying it on, and putting up a fight. The ones at Grumant are sullen, but say nothing. I’m afraid of myself. A hitherto unknown feeling of vengeance is beginning to stir in me; and its vengeance against the commune. I’m afraid of injustice …52 My talent is – envy. Received a letter from Fet with an article from the Continental Review,53 and one from Chicherin. I’m going to Tula today!

20, 21, 22 July    Sorted things out in Tula with Kopylov,54 but there are no workers. Proud soldiers, without noses. A pretty woman reaper surrounded by peasants. They’re arguing about whether it’s possible to exist on corvée. For corvée 5, for the peasants 4. Ivan Ivanych55 is a very keen and splendid gardener. A meeting at home. They signed on for mowing; a clamour about the children. Mowing the next day. Yesterday Gavrila Bolkhin tried to stir up the workers; I called him in and ordered him to work till the Feast of the Intercession. Anisim begged for forgiveness.

The idea occurs to me of describing this summer.56 What form will it take?

4 September    Had a good clean up … Varicose veins enlarged. Went to Nikolenka’s and Turgenev’s: the first is very nice at home, the second intolerably difficult. Fet is a darling. The elections have taken place. I’ve become the enemy of our province.57  Cherkassky and co.58 are just as much rubbish as their opponents, but French-speaking rubbish. Went to Aleksin, and bought a number of horses. Turgenev is behaving badly towards Masha. He’s a bad lot. Played cards. Won. Feel like work. I’m thirty.

15 September    I’ve aged terribly, and grown tired of life this summer. I often have occasion to ask myself with horror – what do I love? Nothing. Positively nothing. Such a situation is pathetic. There’s no possibility of happiness in life; but on the other hand it’s easier to be an out and out spiritual being, ‘a dweller on earth, but devoid of physical needs’. I’m in Moscow. Business will keep me about a week. I’ve seen Korsh and Tyutcheva. I’d almost be prepared to marry her impassively, without love, but she received me with studied coldness. Turgenev’s niece59 was right. It’s difficult to come across a really ugly creature. My illness is moral torture for me. I promised Korsh a description of this summer; but the narrowness of the task sickens me. […]

15 September    […] Spent the evening at Yakovleva’s with Auntie. One can’t help loving people: they are all – we are all – so pitiable. Awfully pitiable. The description of summer won’t come right. I’ll go home tomorrow.

17 September    Roamed about all morning with anguish in my heart. Dined at the Behrs’. What sweet girls! […]

4 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Went hunting with Sukhotin. Saw Katenka!!!! Yesterday at dinner I said that it’s impossible to prove magnetism. Mashenka said that I’m always changing my mind and that I used to believe in it before. I asked her to keep to the point. I always want to play the leading role, she said, and consider her a child. I asked her to hear me out. Seryozha lacks any delicacy, she said.60 I lost my temper and said she had an evil character. She had an affected, but also a genuine attaque de nerfs. Auntie who was on my side wept. Marya Ivanovna wept. Mashenka wept. I wouldn’t have dared to say what I did if her husband had been there, she said. I humiliate her because she lives with me, so to speak, with no place of refuge of her own. Auntie wept for two days. I’d changed so much, she said. It was impossible to fathom my character. But really I’m only asking God for patience.

30 October    Saw Valeriya – had no regrets at all about my feeling. Things are all right again with Mashenka. Things are fine with the children. Went to Tula. Cherkassky isn’t stupid, but rather narrow-minded. No Slavophiles understand music. Copied out The Cossack. Must do it again. No money, and the estate is in a bad way.

27 November    No, I’ve let myself go so much that it’s impossible. Estate management is a boorish occupation. Today Rezun told lies; I flew into a rage and, following the loathsome custom, said: ‘Flog him.’ I waited for him to come and see me. I sent someone to stop the flogging, but he didn’t get there in time. I’ll ask his pardon. I’ll never reprimand anyone again before 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I asked his pardon and gave him three roubles, but I suffered agonies. In the evening, I got on splendidly with The Secret,61 and I see all is well for the future. […]

6 December    Put my papers in order. Before dinner I’ll revise the beginning of The Cossack, and after dinner I’ll work at the minor things.62

7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 December, Moscow    Worked a little; but the estate rut which I’ve been drawn into has been distracting me too much. Today, the 13th, I am in Moscow. Literature, which I had a sniff of yesterday at Fet’s, disgusts me: i.e., I think that since I began my literary career in the most flattering conditions of general praise, sustained for two years during which I occupied almost the first place – without such conditions I don’t want to know literature, i.e., literature for the public – and thank God. I must write quietly and calmly, without the aim of publishing. Wrote a note about the gentry problem, and burned it without showing it to anyone.

23 December    Came to Moscow with the children. Didn’t manage to get another mortgage. Money is needed everywhere. Went bear-hunting. On the 21st – killed one; on the 22nd – was bitten by one.63 Squandered a pile of money.

Notes

1 Tyutcheva.

2 A draft constitution, written by Tolstoy, has survived but nothing came of the project.

3 At the banquet on 28 December 1857. His speech mentioned inter alia the great advantage that the merchant class could derive from the emancipation of the serfs.

4 The estate of Tolstoy’s mother’s cousin, Princess Volkonskaya, where he was spending a few days.

5 Tolstoy was undecided whether to conclude his story Three Deaths with the death of the lady or the tree (see entry for 19 January).

6 Glinka’s opera Ivan Susanin.

7 Turgenev’s story had just appeared in the January issue of The Contemporary.

8 A historian and pupil of Granovsky’s, and therefore in the opposite camp to the Slavophile Aksakov.

9 Y. F. Korsh, a publicist, critic and translator, and a member of the Granovsky circle.

10 A widow whose beauty had once been the inspiration for a poem by Pushkin, and the mother of Tolstoy’s friend Kireyev referred to below.

11 The famous Russian actor Shchepkin played the part of the governor of the town in Gogol’s play.

12 Probably the demi-mondaine often referred to in the diaries as Alexandra Petrovna.

13 The village of Goryachkino, which belonged to the Kuleshovs.

14 Èmile Montégut, a distinguished French critic, was at the time editor of Revue des Deux Mondes; Tolstoy had just read his Confidences d’un hypocondriaque in that journal.

15 The title appears in English. Shakespeare’s play had recently been published in A. A. Grigoryev’s translation, to which Tolstoy was referring.

16 In the context of an article by V. F. Korsh on parliamentary reform in England and the First Reform Act of 1832.

17 The first version of the poem that later became The Unfortunate Ones.

18 One of the early versions of The Cossacks.

19 Perfilyev.

20 Alexeyev had sent to Tolstoy the transcripts of ten Cossack songs.

21 Tolstoy wrote to Nekrasov that he had decided he would no longer be a party to the agreement whereby he and three other writers would publish their works exclusively in The Contemporary.

22 Not Rubens’, but Rembrandt’s.

23 By Saltykov-Schedrin.

24 A restaurant in the centre of Moscow.

25 In the Athenaeum (Ateney) 1858.

26 Two works on natural science by the French historian Jules Michelet.

27 The name is indecipherable, but may be that of Dr Bernard who was tried on the charge of being an accomplice of the Italian revolutionary Count Orsini, who made an attempt on the life of Napoleon III in 1858.

28 Gustav von Meyern’s poem Ein Kaiser, and a note on a German translation of two articles by Emerson on Shakespeare and Goethe which appeared in different issues of the German literary weekly in 1858 (Tolstoy spells it Centralblatt).

29 A report in the Athenaeum (London) of 13 March 1858, of a speech by Dickens criticising the work of the London Literary Fund Society which allegedly devoted too much money to administration and not enough to writers in need.

30 March issues of the Athenaeum contained reviews of books about the Indian Mutiny.

31 Claude-Emmanuel Luillier, dit Chapelle – the author, with Bachaumont, of Voyage en Provence et Languedoc, 1656.

32 The historical memoirs (called Commentaries after Caesar) of the Gasconard officer Blaise de Montluc (or Monluc), who became Maréchal de France in 1574.

33 A political pamphlet L’asino, un sogno, 1857, by the Italian writer and member of Mazzini’s Young Italy, F. D. Guerrazzi.

34 The Russian historian S. M. Solvyov’s Historical Letters branded the views of the Moscow Slavophiles as antihistorical and ‘political Buddhism’.

35 Probably Alfred Assollant’s Scènes de la vie des États Unis, in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

36 Only a fragment has survived.

37 A Moscow doctor and publisher and, like the poet and translator N. M. Satin, a friend of Herzen.

38 Rigault’s article on religion was published on 6 April 1858, in the Journal des Débats, which he edited.

39 The letter of an officer, Rzhevsky, in one of the versions of The Cossacks.

40 Tolstoy read a review of the memoirs of the last four popes by the English cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman.

41 See Note 35.

42 There is no such scene in The Cossacks.

43 Letters, I, 120.

44 This is not the eventual ending of The Cossacks.

45 Chicherin spoke in his letter of his very warm attachment to Tolstoy and his wish to be on closer terms with him.

46 Druzhinin suggested founding a purely literary journal. He and his friends were worried about the increasingly radical trend of The Contemporary.

47 See Note 39.

48 The chapters in The Cossacks devoted to Lukashka’s murder of an Abrek in ‘the cordon’.

49 The first volume of Macaulay’s History of England.

50 The original name of Lukashka in The Cossacks.

51 Aksinya Bazykina, a married peasant woman with whom Tolstoy had a liaison and who bore him a son. She was living with her father-in-law at the time; hence the reference to ‘the daughter-in-law’ later in this entry.

52 These comments refer to Tolstoy’s unsuccessful negotiations with his peasants who resisted his decision to transfer them to the system of quit-rent (obrok) and to farm his land with hired labour.

53 An article in the London journal about Tolstoy’s Childhood.

54 See 1852, Note 52.

55 Sakharov, Tolstoy’s copyist.

56 A fragment entitled A Summer in the Country has survived.

57 For signing a petition by a group of landowners on the need to free the peasants with an allotment of land.

58 The landowner Cherkassky, a publicist of Slavophile sympathies, accepted the need for the peasants to be granted freedom with land, but proposed a number of unacceptable provisos.

59 Since Turgenev did not have a niece it is thought that Tolstoy was referring to Turgenev’s first cousin once removed, Olga Alexandrovna Turgeneva.

60 Probably Sergey Sukhotin. It is not clear from the text who is speaking, and I have apportioned the dialogue between Tolstoy and his sister as the sense seems to require.

61 An episode in The Cossacks.

62 A Summer in the Country.

63 This happened during a hunting expedition with Fet. Tolstoy described the incident in his story for children (translated by Maude as The Bear-Hunt).

1859

1 January, Moscow    All this time I’ve been working, and today as well. My head still aches. I must get married this year – or not at all. The first day has passed too quietly. Saw absolutely nobody. Worked on a thing of no importance.1

16 February    All this time I’ve been working on a novel and I’ve made a lot of progress, though not on paper. I’ve altered everything. A poem. I’m very pleased with what’s in my head. The whole plot is ready and unalterable. I’ve hardly been anywhere. Yesterday, I paid my first visit to Prince Lvov’s. The day before yesterday, I spent the evening with him at Gagarin’s and came home in love with both women.2 Didn’t sleep at night […] Today I’ve calmed down. I’m working. My health isn’t good: both stomach and nerves. Had a dream: strawberries, an avenue, she, – recognised immediately, although never seen – and Chepyzh3 clad in fresh oak-leaves, without a single dry branch or tiny leaf.

9 April, Moscow    Went hunting, then to Petersburg. Ten very happy days in Petersburg.4 Saw Lvova twice again in Moscow. My old feelings came back, but not so strongly. Things would be very good were it not for my health. Received some money and lost it at Chinese billiards. Worked. Finished Anna,5 but it’s not good. […]

9 May, Yasnaya Polyana    A week in the country already. Things are going badly on the estate, and I’m fed up with it. Received Family Happiness.6 It’s a shameful abomination. I find myself revoltingly cold towards everything. Aksinya I recall only with revulsion – her shoulders. Feuillet7 a tremendous talent. I’m sorry for myself. My heart simply doesn’t respond to anything this year. I don’t even feel sorrow. Only the need to work and forget – what? There’s nothing to forget. Forget that I’m alive. I prayed today and want to force myself to work regularly and do even a little good. […]

28 May    I had my hair cut yesterday, and even that seems like a token of rebirth. I’m not pleased with myself. The routine of my life has been disrupted. Aksinya has been to the Troitsa Monastery. I’ve just seen her. She’s been here once; the Fets have been; the house is being rebuilt. Still have lumbago. Now I want to write a bit of The Cossack.

2 October    A summer of work on the estate, melancholy, disorder, irritability and laziness. Masha has built herself a house and moved.

9 October    I’ve been in the country from 28 May until today. Disorganised, irritable, bored, despairing and lazy. I’ve been busy working on the estate, but too little and badly. Continue to see Aksinya exclusively. Masha has moved from my house into her own house; I almost quarrelled with her for good. I struck a man on two occasions this summer. On 6 August I went to Moscow and began dreaming about botany. Of course it’s a dream – childishness. Went to the Lvovs’, and when

I think of that visit – I rave. I was on the point of deciding that that was my last attempt at marriage;8 but that was childishness too. […] And here I am at home and for some reason at peace and confident of my plans for gradual moral self-improvement. May God grant it. […]

11 October    My moral condition gets worse and worse every day, and I’m almost back in my summer rut. I’ll try and get out of it. Read Adam Bede.9 Intensely tragic, although false and filled with only one idea. That’s not so with me. The horses are worse and worse. Got angry with Lukan.

12, 13 October    Wasn’t angry, but didn’t work either. Read Rabelais. Aksinya came. […]

14, 15, 16 October, morning    Had a dream today. Crime is not a particular action, but a particular relationship towards the conditions of life. To kill one’s mother might not be a crime, but to eat up a piece of bread might be a very great crime. How great it felt when I woke up at night with this idea!

The estate has fallen on my shoulders again with all its noisome, oppressive weight. I suffer agonies and am idle.

Notes

1 Family Happiness – also referred to in subsequent entries.

2 Alexandra Lvova and her sister, Gagarin’s wife.

3 An oak wood on Tolstoy’s estate.

4 Mostly in the company of Alexandra Tolstaya.

5 The original name of the heroine of Family Happiness.

6 The proofs of the second part.

7 Tolstoy was probably reading the French novelist Octave Feuillet’s Roman d’un jeune homme pauvre (1858).

8 A reference to Tolstoy’s intended proposal of marriage to Alexandra Lvova, the exact circumstances of which are unclear.

9 There is a copy of George Eliot’s novel in Tolstoy’s library at Yasnaya Polyana with his markings in the margins.

1860

1 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Couldn’t get to sleep yesterday till 5 in the morning. Read about dégénérescence de l’espèce humaine [degeneration of the human species] and about the fact that there is a higher physical degree of mental development. I belong to that degree. Mechanically thought about prayer. But pray to whom? What sort of God is it that I can imagine Him so clearly, can ask Him things and communicate with Him? And if I imagine Him to be like that, He loses all greatness for me. A God of whom one can ask things and whom it is possible to serve is an expression of weakness of mind. He is God precisely because I can’t imagine to myself His whole being. Besides, He is not being; He is law and might. Let this page stand as a memorial to my conviction of the power of the mind.

1 February    A Russian type, too pure from lack of contact with life.2

16 February    Yesterday I made a few changes on the estate. Did a little reading and teaching.3 […]

22 May    Whitsunday. Rain. Read Auerbach4 and Reinecke Fuchs.5 Read through my memorandum6 – it makes sense. I’ve lost all my good spirits – I’m sad. I must love everyone, Filat and Ivan too, and be more natural with them. Cursed the headman and Matvey.

26 May    Had an unusual dream – I thought how the strange religion of mine and the religion of our time is the religion of progress. Whoever said to anybody that progress is good? It’s only the absence of belief, and the need for conscious activity decked out as belief. Man needs stress, Spannung [tension] – yes.

Got up at 5, attended to things myself and everything was fine – felt in good spirits. She7 was nowhere about. I looked for her. It’s no longer the feeling of a stag, but of a husband for a wife. It’s strange. I try to reawaken my former feeling of surfeit, and I can’t. An insurmountable indifference to work – that’s what arouses this feeling for her most of all. In the evening I nearly lost my temper over the dungheap, dismounted and started to work full steam, and everything was fine again and I began to love them all. It will be strange if my worship of work proves of no avail. Couldn’t get to sleep, felt unwell, wrote to Mashenka.

21 July/2 August, Kissingen    I’ve hardly written my diary at all for two months. Today is 20 July.8 I’m in Kissingen. I’ll try to go backwards from today to the day I left.9

Yesterday, 19/31 July    Read a history of pedagogy.10 Luther is great. Went for a walk. Day-labourers work less than half as much as our peasant women and earn twenty copecks a day. Ignorance, poverty, laziness, weakness. Yesterday, I went to see an American pastor about schools. They’re all controlled by the government, and their privileges have killed all private competition. The teaching of religion – just the Bible without explanations or abbreviations.

18/30 July    Went for a walk with the Auerbachs.11 Read Räumer.

17/24 July    Visited a school. Terrible. A prayer for the king, beatings, everything, by heart, frightened, morally deformed children.

16/28 July    Visited a school for young children – just as bad. Lautiermethode. [phonetic method]. Met a German, a free-thinking old man. Walked in the fields. Knecht.12

22 July/3 August    Read a history of pedagogy. Francis Bacon.13 Founder of materialism. Luther a reformer in religion – back to the sources. Bacon in natural science. Riehl14 in politics. Met Fröbel.15 An aristocrat – and a liberal. Riehl is a chatterbox. Art cannot produce anything when it is conscious art.

23 July/4 August    Read Riehl and Herzen16 – an unbridled intelligence: morbid self-love, but breadth, cleverness and kindness, and refinement – all Russian. Went hunting. Wrote home.

24 July/5 August    Montaigne was the first to express clearly the idea of freedom of education. In education again the main thing is equality and freedom.

25 July/6 August    Read Riehl’s Kulturgeschichte.17 Learned word-play predominates. He forgets art. Volkskunde [folklore] consists of a multitude of individual sciences. And art is an ancillary though an independent one. But Riehl is not an artist and wants to make out of his Volkskunde a medley of art and science. Seryozha has arrived. A dream come true. Very bad news. He’s gambled everything away. Nikolenka is worse.

26 July/7 August    Managed to read a bit of Riehl’s book on calendars.18 He’s right – about the organic importance of old popular calendars and generally of popular literature from the people themselves. But what place is there for Auerbach then? An intermédiaire between the people and the educated class. Dreamed about the abolition of roulette. Went for a walk in the evening. Chatted with the peasants. An idea for a story. A worker overpowers a girl or a woman. I don’t know yet what form it will take.19

27 July/8 August    Seryozha wants company, the glitter of aristocracy affects him. Went a walk on my own. Form of the story: look at it from the peasant’s point of view – respect for peasant wealth, conservatism. Scorn and contempt for idleness. Man doesn’t live by himself, God guides him.

29 July/10 August    Met Fröbel. A Liberal chatterbox. The Auerbachs left the day before yesterday, and the night before we had a splendid chat about literature. I offered him a lease. Received a letter from home. It took me back disagreeably to all the unpleasant things about the estate.

30 July/11 August    Went to Haritz,20 met a young schoolteacher interested in the question whether to write on one line or on two. An old man, a slave to routine. Hired some workers and did some mowing.

31 July/12 August    Nikolenka’s situation is awful. He’s terribly clever and clearheaded. And he wants to live. But he has no energy for living. Went to Geroda. The Auerbachs – even she – are extraordinarily nice.

1/13 August    Nikolenka left. I don’t know what to do. Mashenka and he are in a bad way. And I’m no use. Spent all the time after dinner with Fröbel. He’s begun to respect me. The evening with Landauer.

2, 3, 4/14, 15, 16 August    Got to know Fröbel better. Politics have exhausted him completely. Met Blum21 and an economist. Not many clever people. The thought of experimental pedagogy excited me, but I couldn’t restrain myself, talked about it and weakened the force of it. Did some writing.22 The Auerbachs arrived. Skopin23  stayed on. Received a letter from Nikolenka.

11/23 August    Dreamed that I was dressed as a peasant and my mother didn’t recognise me. […] The form of the novel24 seems to be taking shape.

12/24 August    Read Riehl. Conservatism is impossible. More general ideas are needed than those about state organisms – the idea of poetry – and you won’t find it in America or in the new Europe now taking shape. Feared all day for my chest.

17/29 August, Soden – Frankfurt25    […] On the journey the thought occurred to me to make the story simple26 – vividly imagining Andrey as a listener. Nikolenka is in good spirits. It’s time to stop expecting unexpected gifts from life, and to make life for oneself.

13/25 October, Hyères    It will soon be a month since Nikolenka died. This event cut me off from life terribly. Once again the question: why? It’s not long now before I set off there. But where? Nowhere. I try to write, I force myself, and nothing comes of it only because I can’t ascribe to work the importance I need to ascribe to it to have the strength and the patience to work. During the funeral itself the thought occurred to me to write a materialist Gospel, a life of a material Christ. Nothing remarkable about the journey from Soden. In Geneva – the Collège. History by dictation, and one person doing sums. A drunken teacher. Morally deformed children in a salle d’asile [infant school]. Foolish Turgenev.27 Nikolenka’s death is the strongest impression of my life. Marseille. School is not in the schools, but in the journals and cafés.

16/28 October    Sunday. The one way to live is to work. To work one must love work. To love work, the work must be attractive. To be attractive, it must be half done, and well done. Cercle vicieux. But what can one do? Fortune-telling, irresolution, idleness, melancholy, thoughts of death. I must escape from this. There’s only one way. Force myself to work. It’s now one o’clock and I’ve done nothing. Must finish the first chapter after dinner.28 […]

29 October/10 November    For ten years or so I haven’t had such a wealth of images and ideas as these last three days. I can’t write, they are so abundant.

31 October/12 November    A boy of thirteen has died in agony from consumption. What for? The only explanation is furnished by belief in the compensation of a future life. If that doesn’t exist, there is no justice, and no need for justice, and the demand for justice is a superstition.

1/13 November    Justice constitutes the essential demand man makes on man. Man seeks the same relationship in his attitude to the world. Without a future life it isn’t there. Expediency! That is the only immutable law of nature, say the natural scientists. It isn’t there in the manifestations of man’s soul – love and poetry, the best manifestations. It isn’t there. All these things live and die, often without having found their expression. Nature has far overstepped her mark in giving man the need for poetry and love, if her only law is expediency.

Notes

1 An article by the French archaeologist and psychologist Alfred Maury in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

2 The reference is obscure.

3 In autumn 1859 Tolstoy had begun to give lessons to the children on his estate.

4 Tolstoy was reading Berthold Auerbach’s Neues Leben at the time. He subsequently met the German writer in Berlin in 1861.

5 Goethe’s poem.

6 Tolstoy had some criticisms to make of new draft regulations for primary and secondary education in schools run by the Ministry of Education.

7 Aksinya Bazykina.

8 2 August is in fact 21, not 20 July, old style. There are other minor errors in dating hereabouts.

9 On 27 June Tolstoy and his sister and her children set off on a journey abroad to study educational systems and teaching methods in Europe. They travelled via Moscow to Petersburg and from there by boat to Stettin. After spending a week or so in Berlin they travelled on to the Bavarian resort of Kissingen, stopping en route at Leipzig.

10 By Karl von Räumer.

11 Not to be confused with B. Auerbach (Note 4). G. A. Auerbach owned a factory near Tula and his wife was headmistress of the local girls’ school.

12 The reference is obscure.

13 Tolstoy read about Bacon in Räumer’s history.

14 Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, a distinguished professor of history and public law at the University of Munich. Tolstoy was reading his magnum opus, Naturgeschichte des Volkes, als Grundlage einer deutschen Sozialpolitik.

15 Julius Fröbel, the nephew of the better-known Friedrich Fröbel, the educational reformer and founder of the kindergarten. Julius Fröbel had been sentenced to death for his part in the 1848 revolution, but the sentence was commuted and he went to live in America. He returned to Germany in 1857. In his memoirs he recalled his meeting and conversations with Tolstoy.

16 Probably the collection of Herzen’s articles After Five Years published in London in 1860.

17 Kulturstudien aus drei Jahrhunderten, 1859.

18 An article from the Kulturstudien on folk calendars in the eighteenth century.

19 The first mention of the story An Idyll, which may have overtones of Tolstoy’s liaison with Aksinya. The syntax of the passage is obscure.

20 A village near Kissingen.

21 A retired professor of geography and statistics.

22 Some of Tolstoy’s notes on experimental pedagogy have survived.

23 A teacher of Russian in a school in Tula.

24 Probably The Cossacks.

25 Tolstoy arrived in Soden on 14/26 August to join his brother Nikolay, who was seriously ill with tuberculosis. They travelled together to Hyères, stopping at Frankfurt, Geneva and Marseille where Tolstoy visited schools. Nikolay died at Hyères on 20 September.

26 An Idyll.

27 Thought to be the Decembrist N. I. Turgenev, not the novelist, but the reference is obscure.

28 It is now thought that this refers not to The Cossacks but to The Decembrists, which Tolstoy abandoned early in 1861 after writing only three chapters.

1861

1/13 April, Weimar1    It’s difficult to write down now what has happened these last four months – Italy, Nice, Florence, Livorno. An attempt to write Aksinya.2 Naples. The first vivid impression of nature and antiquity – Rome – Hyères – Paris – reconciliation with Turgenev – London – not too bad – a loathing for civilisation. Brussels – a brief feeling of domesticity, a letter about Katenka to Mashenka.3  Eisenach – the journey – thoughts about God and immortality. God has been restored – hope and immortality. The first and second night in Eisenach – the cries of a sick child – the clocks – the babbling. Weimar – a wench – Liebes gutes Kind, sie sind irre [Dear good child, you are mistaken]. The teacher’s Landmann [fellow countryman]. Tröbst.4 The Duke.5

1/13 April    Got up at 10, toothache, went to the Kinderarbeitgarten – a good thing for the town, but the same communism. Then to see Langhart.6 A narrow-minded teacher-administrator. His idea of Reforme – die Schule mit dem Leben verbinden [to connect up school and life]. Tröbst is dissatisfied with Langhart; he could, but he hasn’t the energy to understand me. […]

3/15 April, Jena    Couldn’t sleep last night. I can’t solve the problem of upbringing and education, but I’m taking a calmer view of German education. […] Only Germany has derived pedagogy from philosophy. The Reformation of philosophy. England, France and America have imitated it.

4/16 April, Weimar    Schullehrerseminar [School teachers’ seminar]. Excellent. Rechnen [counting] with sticks and conversion to numbers – geography with problems of measurements. (Language instruction not good, with needless effort spent on defining what is already defined. Zwätzen.7 A very stupid school, showing what institutions imposed from above can lead to. Theory without practice. Grignon – a model. Set off on foot. In the mountains and in the woods I revelled in nature, simply and happily. […]

The job of a school is not die Wissenschaft beibringen [to impart knowledge] but die Achtung und die Idee der Wissenschaft beibringen [to impart the respect for and idea of knowledge]. With this thought I dropped off to sleep peacefully. On the journey, as I was throwing pebbles, I thought about art too. Is it possible to have as one’s sole aim only situations and not characters? I think it is, and that’s what I’ve done, and that’s where I’ve been successful. Only it’s not everybody’s task, but mine.

5/17 April    Got up at 8. At the Kindergarten. Geometric drawing and basket-making are nonsense. You won’t discern the laws of development of a child that way. They learn by heart when it doesn’t concern their world, but you can’t understand their world. A child can draw sticks, but only has a vague idea of a circle. And you can’t teach perseverance when everything is new. Perseverance is the strength to reject everything that isn’t what you want to be concerned with. Biedermann8 is not stupid, but he’s a scholar and a writer, a part of whom is already in his book and no longer in him. But apart from Childhood, I exist entirely in myself, and for that reason I look down on these people so freely. Afterwards, Tröbst and Kaehler9 with his mother. After seeing her I realised that I was taking a responsibility on myself by taking him away. But he has a long neck. Today I can think more freely about his work, since the school has taken shape – the transition from the practice of life to theory: taking what is ready made from life and reducing it to a system – in all sciences, but especially the natural sciences. Went for a walk to beautiful Tiefurt with Bech, Tröbst and Kaehler. Empty chatter. The Duchess is stupidly ill at ease. Zauberflöte – I was in raptures, especially the duet. Kaehler, I think, is useless.

6/18 April, Dresden10    […] Went to evening mass. I can stand it in church. Perhaps I’ll prepare for communion. Chatted with Lvov. A smell of mother-Russia. Chicherin is terribly repulsive.11

7/19 April    […] Deutscher Disputations-Verein [German debating society]. I spoke. On the country’s education and on public opinion.

9/21 April, Berlin    […] Auerbach!!!!!12 A most charming man! Ein Licht mir aufgegangen [He was a revelation to me]. His stories about the juryman, about the first impression of nature in Versöhnungsabend [The Evening of Reconciliation], about Klauser, the pastor of Christianity. He is as it were the spirit of mankind, than which there is nothing higher. He read poetry enchantingly. About music, as pflichtloser Genuss [pleasure without obligations]. A turn in the direction of corruption in his opinion. A story from the Schatzkästlein.13 He’s forty-nine, upright, young, a believer. No poet of negation.

12/24 April    The frontier. Well and cheerful; hardly aware of being in Russia.

6 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Haven’t written my diary for about ten days. Travelled with Mme Fet and was bored. In Tula the Auerbachs, Golovachev and Voyeykov to cause chaos. Auntie is sad and has aged. Seryozha is good in every respect, only he’s idle. I’ve been appointed an arbiter of the peace14 and have accepted. Went to Tula, chatted a lot and am beginning to be proud and therefore stupid. Markov has refused the co-editorship of the journal.15 And generally speaking the idea of the journal is flagging. Chaos at Pirogovo, and Seryozha and I could do nothing. I’ve forgotten the pleasant day at the Behrs’; but I daren’t marry Liza.16

Tomorrow morning, Polikushka, and read the statutes.17 In the evening, prepare the school syllabus and a lecture.

7 May    Read the statutes with the peasants, and nothing else. I’m overcome by laziness. Yermil sighed: ‘Lord have mercy!’ Ivan Deyev: ‘The secret police’!18 The German19 is useless. I’m disgusted with the horses.

8 May    Prepared a history lecture till 12. Read it and copied it out before dinner; after dinner I went out for a ride. […]

9 May    Went to mass; invited the priest to come and read. The children’s explanation of the rituals is even more stupid than the one the priest gives them. Some gentlemen from the grammar school. A meeting. I invited them to write for the journal.20 […]

12 May    Submitted an application about the school.21 I’m a parish teacher. Tired myself out with gymnastics. Wonderful lectures in the garden. Came back home and was seized with the desire to write The Cossack. […]

25 June    A remarkable quarrel with Turgenev;22 a final one – he’s an absolute scoundrel – but I think that in time I’ll relent and forgive him. My work as an arbiter hasn’t provided me with much material and has made me quarrel with all the landowners for good, and has ruined my health – also for good, I think. Order prevails in the school, but it lacks life, I’m afraid. I’m not going because of illness. Wrote out a syllabus.23

22 September, Moscow    I’m in Moscow. Was right about Turgenev. I meant to write him a letter – and for some reason didn’t – in which I meant to ask his forgiveness. There’s a great deal of work ahead. I’ll cling on to it. Liza Behrs tempts me, but nothing will come of it. Mere calculation isn’t enough, and there’s no feeling.

23 September    Wrote a letter to Turgenev.24 Went to Rachinsky’s.25 Found a crowd of young professors there. ‘We’re clever people; we can also enjoy ourselves in a simple manner.’ Chicherin is proud, which I’m very glad about. Read my letter to him. Better that I didn’t send it. Pikulin will examine me today. I’m not having supper and am almost well. I’ve got consumption, but I’m getting used to it.26 I’m bored because my circle is too restricted. She is probably in the place where I’m not.

8 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday I received a letter from Turgenev in which he accused me of telling people that he’s a coward and of distributing copies of my letter to him. Wrote back to him that it was nonsense, and sent a letter as well: ‘you call my behaviour dishonourable; you wanted to punch my face before, but I consider myself to blame, ask your forgiveness and decline the challenge.’27

I have two students;28 the school is getting worse. I’m beginning to get disillusioned about the journal.

28 October    School and arbitration business are going well, but we haven’t started on the journal yet. I feel like writing. Yesterday I opened a third school, which won’t be a success. Wrote to Chicherin about students.

5 November    Went to church with the singers. The teachers are poor. Alexey Ivanovich is stupid. Alexander Pavlovich is morally unwell. Ivan Ilich is the most reliable of all. Quarrelled with the headman; made a good start on The Yasnaya Diary.29 Interrupted by the schoolchildren. Plebeian indignation on Chernov’s part against Auerbach. The teachers have some disgusting secrets. If it’s women, that’s all right. Kaehler’s experiments are interesting and good. He’s a nice and useful lad. I feel well, and in the mood for writing. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. Is this good mood going to last generally, or is it only that my bile is working properly again?

6 November    Wrote my diary30 in the morning, pretty well. A mass of material. Worked at the school; feeling my way with analysis.

Pyotr Vasilyevich31 was drunk. Gymnastics. Read Perevlessky32 – he’s not right. After dinner I wasted time singing. In the evening I couldn’t get on with my writing. I still feel like working – we’ll see what happens.

Notes

1 Tolstoy reached Weimar on 31 March/12 April after four months travelling in Europe. He left Hyères at the end of November 1860 (old style) and spent about a fortnight in Florence where he met the Decembrist S. G. Volkonsky, whom he intended to portray in his novel about them. In the course of January he visited Livorno, and then spent a month or so in Naples and Rome. Little is known of his stay in Paris except that he continued to visit schools and briefly resumed his friendship with Turgenev. His short visit to England is the subject of a recent book Tolstoy in London, by Victor Lucas, London, 1979, which gives an interesting account of his educational activities, schools visits and collection of pedagogical material, including essays written for him by schoolchildren in London which he took back with him to Russia. Much of March was spent in Brussels pursuing his educational interests and working on his story Polikushka, and from there he went via Frankfurt and Eisenach to Weimar.

2 The story An Idyll, or its second version Tikhon and Malanya, which drew on Tolstoy’s liaison with Aksinya Bazykina.

3 Tolstoy had met Princess Golitsyna and her niece Katenka the previous winter in Hyères, and his sister was on friendly terms with them both. Tolstoy was seriously attracted by Katenka and even contemplated marriage. According to his wife, the two ladies were the prototypes of Mme Stahl and her ward Varenka in Anna Karenina.

4 The headmaster of a school in Weimar and a children’s writer.

5 The Duke was a grandson of Paul I and had founded a museum and an art school in Weimar.

6 The headmaster of another school in Weimar.

7 A village near Jena which had an agricultural school which Tolstoy visited.

8 A German historian and journalist, at the time editor of a Weimar newspaper. The book Tolstoy referred to was his Geschichtsunterricht nach kulturgeschichtlicher Methode, 1860.

9 A German teacher whom Tolstoy invited to work for him at his school in Yasnaya Polyana. Kaehler stayed with Tolstoy until summer 1862, and later taught German at a school in Tula.

10 Tolstoy spent three days in Dresden en route for Berlin to visit more schools and buy books.

11 A reference to two letters of advice and admonition from Chicherin.

12 Tolstoy’s long talk with Berthold Auerbach was the highlight of his visit to Berlin.

13 A cycle of short stories for the people by Auerbach.

14 He served for only one year. The posts of arbiter were created after the emancipation to adjudicate between landowners and peasants in disputes arising from the settlement of 1861.

15 Tolstoy’s pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana which began to appear in January 1862.

16 Sonya’s elder sister.

17 The Act of Emancipation of February 1861.

18 Two Yasnaya Polyana peasants who were suspicious of the provisions of the new Act.

19 It is not clear whether Tolstoy was referring to his German gardener or to the German teacher Kaehler.

20 Teachers from the school in Tula who visited Tolstoy’s school but failed to respond to his invitation to write for his journal.

21 An application for official recognition.

22 This was the famous quarrel at Fet’s estate when Tolstoy offended Turgenev by an injudicious reference to the education of Turgenev’s illegitimate daughter (Letters, I, 148).

23 A programme for the first issue of Yasnaya Polyana.

24 The letter has not survived, but Tolstoy’s wife refers to its contents in her diary, from which it would appear that Tolstoy apologised and asked Turgenev’s forgiveness – although Turgenev apparently did not think so!

25 A professor of botany at Moscow University, who was also interested in educational theory (Letters, I, 158).

26 Unlike his brothers Nikolay and Dmitry, Tolstoy never suffered from consumption.

27 See Letters, I, 148. Turgenev accused Tolstoy of circulating copies of the letter referred to in Note 24, and threatened to ‘demand satisfaction’.

28 Students employed as teachers at his school.

29 The first version of the article The Yasnaya Polyana School in November and December.

30 Yasnaya Polyana Diary.

31 P. V. Morozov, a teacher from Tula, soon to be employed by Tolstoy at the Yasnaya Polyana school.

32 Author of a book of object lessons based on Pestalozzi’s theories. Tolstoy criticised the book in the August issue of Yasnaya Polyana, 1862.

1862

20 May    On the steamer.1 I seem to be coming back to life and to the awareness of it.

Since Moscow I’ve been thinking over things. The idea of the folly of progress haunts me. With the clever and the stupid, the old and the young, I talk only about this one thing. Wrote an article in this spirit for the 6th number of Yasnaya Polyana.2 […]

23 August, Moscow    In Moscow. Haven’t eaten for two days, had awful toothache, spent the night at the Behrs’. A child!3 It could be! But what terrible confusion! Oh, if only I could manage to reach a clear and honourable position. I must write two articles: on Markov,4 and on the Committee for Literacy and R.5 Submitted a letter to the Tsar.6 Marvelled at the manoeuvres.7 How splendid! A dragoon makes a blunder, but the Tsar gallops on. I’m afraid for myself – what if this is the desire for love, and not love? I try to look only at her weak sides, but nevertheless. A child! It could be!

24 August    Got up feeling well and with a particularly clear head; the writing went well, but the content is poor. Then I felt sadder than I’ve been for a long time. No, I haven’t any friends at all! I’m alone. I used to have friends when I served Mammon, but not now that I serve the truth. Went to Auntie’s. Living isn’t so simple for old ladies either, and life pulsates for them with all its subtle complexities. Went to Kryzhanovsky’s; he tried to show that he’s not forgotten in his grandeur.8 If only he knew how I hold his grandeur against him. Orlov – what a simpleton he is! At the theatre I couldn’t sit through the ballet,9 but the Tsar does so every day. To Katkov’s. The sour-tempered Babst. They’re discussing the good of Russia all the time too. Katkov’s wife – they’re ashamed of her, but she’s cleverer than all of them, she’s a mother. I think less about Sonya, but when I do, it’s good.

26 August    Walked to the Behrs’; it was quiet and cosy there. Girlish laughter. Sonya was plain and vulgar, but she interests me. She gave me a story to read.10  What force of truth and simplicity! The uncertainty torments her. I read it all without a sinking heart, and without a sign of jealousy or envy, but ‘unusually unattractive appearance’ and ‘fickleness of opinions’ touched me on the raw. I’ve calmed down now. All this is not for me. Work, and just the satisfaction of my needs.

28 August    I’m thirty-four. Got up with my usual melancholy. Thought up a society for craft apprentices. Paquot11 came with a bunch of letters and flowers. Serdobolsky.12 Suvorin.13 Popov.14 Worked a bit; wasted my time writing to Sonya in initial letters.15 Wasted my time dining at Pechkin’s, had a nap at home. To the Sushkovs’ (lied about the 1,000 roubles). A pleasant evening at the Tyutchevs’. A sweet, reassuring night. You ugly mug, don’t think about marriage; your vocation is different, and for that you have been well endowed.

29 August    […] Wrote badly. If you avoid the essential, the result is tittle-tattle. Dined at home. Called on Behrs and went with him to Pokrovskoye. Nothing, nothing, silence … Not love, as before, not jealousy, not pity even, though rather like it, but something sweet, a bit of hope (which there shouldn’t be). You swine. A bit like pity and sorrow. But a wonderful night, and a good, sweet feeling. She made me decipher the letter. I was embarrassed. So was she. There was a scene. It’s all unnatural. Popov is unusually intelligent and pleasant. I’m sad, but happy too. Mashenka says: ‘You ‘re always waiting for something.’ How can I help it?

30 August    Worked in the morning. Was interrupted by Timiryazev.16 Gilyarov17  made me angry. Dined at home, had a sleep, then to the Behrs’. I’m not jealous of Sonya because of P.;18 I can’t believe that it’s not me. It seemed the right moment, but it was night-time. She spoke in the same way; sadly and calmly. A walk, the summer-house, supper at home, her eyes – and the night-time! You fool, it’s not meant for you; but still I’m in love, as never before except with Sonechka Koloshina and A.19 Spent the night at their house, couldn’t sleep; nothing but her. ‘You’ve never loved,’ she said, and it was so funny and I was so glad.

31 August    In the morning, too, the same sweet feeling, and the fullness of a life of love. Did some writing. Two fools – Pleshcheyev and Yakushkin – interrupted me; a foreword and insertions to Mohammed.20 To the Tyutchevs’; died-in-the-wool blue stockings. How offensive they are to me. Someone spoke and it seemed like her voice. This third and last love is deep-seated. It’s not for you, you old devil – go on writing critical articles! Began to write to her and was interrupted – a good job. I can’t leave now – and that’s that. Kokhanovskaya21 is nauseating; they’re all nauseating – shrivelled up in their crinolines.

3 September    At their place; nothing special at first, then a walk. ‘He’s ugly; you look well.’ Lorgnettes. ‘Please come again.’ I’ve calmed down! On the way back I thought: either it’s all unintentional, or her feelings are unusually subtle, or it’s the basest coquetry – one man today, another tomorrow – and where does the person leaving fit in?22 – or else it’s unintentional and subtle and coquettish. But on the whole nothing, nothing, silence. Never has my future life with a wife presented itself to me so clearly, joyfully and calmly. Evening at the Perfilyevs’. Boring old men. I know, Vasyuk,23 I know about your sins. How mean the silent deceiving of each other – the settling of scores. But perhaps it’s my fate too. Memento, Dublitsky, old devil, uncle Lyavon.24 Yet my feelings say: Mein schönes Herz [My dear heart]. Above all, I think, it would be so simple, so timely, with neither passion, nor fear, nor a moment’s regret.

7 September    Told Vasenka and felt calmer. Vasenka is pitiable: he feels so shallow and at the same time so old. Today I’m on my own at home and can reflect on my own situation as it were at leisure. I must wait. Dublitsky, don’t intrude where youth, poetry, beauty and love are – leave that to cadets, my friend. Vasenka and I gorged ourselves today and lay facing each other, breathing heavily – that’s the thing for you. Nonsense. A monastery, work – that’s your vocation, and from its height you can look down calmly and gladly at other people’s love and happiness. I’ve been in that monastery and I’ll go back again. Yes.

My diary is insincere. Arrière-pensée [mental reservation] that she is with me, and will sit beside me and read and … and this is for her.

8 September    In the morning Auerbach came with his wife’s article. Vasenka, Suvorin. Sasha Behrs. Went round to the Behrs’ for dinner all the same. Andrey Yevstafyev25 stayed in his room – it was as if I’d stolen something. Tanechka26 was serious and severe. Sonya opened the door; she seemed to have grown thinner. She has nothing in her for me of what the others had and have – the conventionally poetic and attractive – but she draws me irresistibly. (I went to the village with Sasha – a wench, a peasant coquette, aroused my interest, alas.) Liza seems to be quietly taking possession of me. My God! How beautifully unhappy she would be if she were my wife. In the evening she wouldn’t give me the music for a long time. I was seething all over. Sonya played the part of a little Tatyana Behrs, and that seemed to me an encouraging sign. We had a walk at night.

9 September    She blushes and is agitated. Oh, Dublitsky, don’t dream. Came back with Paquot and Sasha, had dinner and slept. Started to work, but couldn’t. Instead of work, I wrote her a letter which I won’t send.27 I can’t leave Moscow, I can’t. I’m writing without any ulterior motive, for myself only, and I’m trying not to make any plans. I seem to have been in Moscow for a year already.

Couldn’t sleep till 3. Dreamed and suffered agonies like a sixteen-year-old boy.

10 September    Woke up on 10 September at 10, tired after a restless night. Worked sluggishly, and waited for the evening as a schoolboy waits for Sunday. Went for a walk. To the Perfilyevs’. The stupid Praskovya Fyodorovna. To the Kuznetsky Bridge and the Kremlin. She wasn’t there. She was at the young Gorstkins’. She came back looking serious and severe. And I went off again without hope and more in love than ever. Au fond there is hope. I must, I absolutely must cut this knot. I’m beginning to hate Liza as well as pity her. Lord! Help me and teach me. Another sleepless and agonising night; I feel it, I, who laughed at the sufferings of people in love. What you laugh at, you become a slave to. How many plans have I made to tell her and Tanechka, and all in vain. I’m beginning to hate Liza with all my heart. Lord, help me, teach me. Mother of God, help me.

11 September    Wrote well in the morning. My feelings are just as strong. The whole day was just like yesterday.

Didn’t dare to go to their house. Walked a lot, went to Yakovleva’s. Talked to Vasya. No one can help me except God. I beseech Him. Evening at the Perfilyevs’. The pretty Mendt girls. No one for me. I’m tired. A sort of physical restlessness.

12 September    Roamed about all day and went to gymnastics. Dined at the club. I’m in love as I never believed it possible to love. I’m mad, I’ll shoot myself if it goes on like this. Spent the evening at their house. She’s charming in every respect. But I’m the repulsive Dublitsky. I should have been on my guard sooner. Granted I’m Dublitsky, but love makes me beautiful. Yes. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to their house. There have been moments, but I didn’t take advantage of them. I was timid; I should simply have spoken. I just want to go back now and say everything in front of them all. Lord, help me.

13 September    Nothing happened. Seryozha arrived though. Every day I think that it’s impossible to suffer more and at the same time to be happy, and every day I become more demented. Went out again with melancholy, remorse and happiness in my heart. I’ll go tomorrow as soon as I get up and say everything, or I’ll shoot myself.

14 September    4 am. I wrote her a letter.28 I’ll give it her tomorrow, i.e. today, the 14th. My God, how afraid I am of dying. Happiness, and such happiness, seems to me impossible. My God, help me.

15 September    Only slept for an hour and a half, but feel fresh and am terribly nervous. The same feelings this morning. Went to Seryozha’s and we laughed there about the immortality of the soul. To the Kremlin. To the nauseating Tyutchevs’ and to them. The situation has become clear, I think. She’s strange … I can’t write for myself only. It seems to me, in fact I’m sure, that soon there won’t be any secrets for me alone, but secrets for two; she will read everything. We went to the Perfilyevs’. Went to bed nervously exhausted, but didn’t sleep much – six hours. Yesterday the 14th – I was a bit calmer, and today I’m calmer still. Something will happen.

15 September    I didn’t speak, but said there was something to speak about. Told Vasenka about the death of Nikolenka and wept like a child. Tomorrow.

16 September    I spoke. She said – yes. She’s like a winged bird. There’s nothing to write. All this can’t be forgotten and can’t be written down.

17 September    Fiancé, presents, champagne. Liza is pitiable and depressed. She must hate me. She kissed me.

18 September    Worked in the morning, then went to their house. Olga Zaykovskaya.29 Met Seryozha. She was unkempt. Dinner without Liza. A talk with Andrey Yefstafyevich. Polivanov. She doesn’t kiss in an ordinary way but earnestly.

19 September    I’m calmer. Slept through the morning. Chicherin, boredom. Roamed around aimlessly; 5.30 at their house. She was anxious. Liza looked better; in the evening she said she loved me.

20, 21, 22, 23, 24 September, Moscow – Yasnaya Polyana    I can’t understand how the week has passed. I don’t remember anything: only the kiss by the piano and the appearance of Satan, then jealousy of the past, doubts about her love and the thought that she’s deceiving herself.

Good news about the article30 and the sale of my works.31 On the wedding day, fear, distrust and the desire to run away. The festivities of the ceremony. She was in tears. In the carriage. She knows everything and it’s simple. At Biryulevo. Her timidity. Something morbid. Yasnaya Polyana. Seryozha affectionate. Auntie already preparing to suffer. The night; a bad dream. Not her.

25 September    At Yasnaya    Morning coffee – ill at ease. The students are puzzled. Had a walk with her and Seryozha. Dinner. She was too forward. I slept after dinner and she wrote. Unbelievable happiness. And again she’s writing by my side. It can’t be that all this will last as long as life itself.

26, 27, 28, 29, 30 September    At Yasnaya. I can’t recognise myself. All my mistakes are clear to me. I love her just the same, if not more. I can’t work. Today there was a scene. I was sad that we behave just the same way as other people. I told her she had hurt me with regard to my feelings for her, and I wept. She’s charming. I love her even more. But is it all genuine?

1 October    We kept our word. An excellent morning. Attended to things on the estate. Was angry with Ignatyev32 over the bank business. Vasily Yermilovich33  came. After dinner I wrote letters. She doesn’t want to write to the aunts at court – she senses everything. Said goodbye to the students and to the people.34

2, 3, 4–14 October    We’ve had two more clashes: (1) because I was rude and (2) because of her n.35 I love her more and more, although with a different love; there have been difficult moments. […]

15 October    All this time I’ve been busy with what are called practical matters, nothing else. But this idleness is beginning to weigh on me. I can’t respect myself. And therefore I’m not satisfied with myself and uncertain in my relations with others. I’ve decided to close the journal and the schools too – I think. I’m still annoyed with my life, and even with her. I must work …

19 December    Another month of happiness. The only bad thing is Stellovsky, my mistake concerning him. Now there’s a period of tranquillity as far as my feelings for her are concerned. I’m working very hard, yet it seems trivial stuff. Finished the first part of The Cossacks.

The features of my present life are fullness, absence of dreams, hopes and self-consciousness, but on the other hand fear and remorse over my egoism. The students are leaving and I’m sorry for them. Auntie has assumed a new, elderly expression which touches me.

22 December    A strange dreamy state, as my wife says, but I’ve lots of energy – I’m not smoking. The students are angry that they owe money and are to blame in my eyes. I’m sorry about this aspect, which is outside the scope of all the agreements.

27 December, Moscow    We are in Moscow.36 As always I’ve paid penance with ill health and a bad frame of mind. I was very displeased with her, compared her with other people, almost repented of it, but knew it was only temporary and waited, and it passed. We had words over the doll; she wanted to show off her simple tastes in front of me. Now we’ve got over it. We went to the theatre; it was wasted on her too. I’m afraid of her father. Lyubov Alexandrovna is nice. I keep looking hard at Tanya. I’ve seen no writers apart from Fet and I won’t see any.

30 December    A mass of thoughts; I just want to write. I’ve become terribly grown up. I wonder if I’m envious? I can’t help growing old. A stupid evening at the Behrs’. Labord.37 Tanya – sensuality. Sonya moves me with her fears. The mere difference [?] between us hurts me. I will always love her.

Notes

1 On the Volga, en route for Samara, where Tolstoy was going to take the kumys (fermented mare’s milk) cure.

2 Upbringing and Education.

3 S. A. Behrs, Tolstoy’s future wife.

4 Progress and the Definition of Education, in reply to an article by a teacher from Tula, Y. L. Markov, on the theory and practice of Tolstoy’s school. Tolstoy’s article was published in Yasnaya Polyana.

5 An article (also published in Tolstoy’s journal) on the publishing activities of the Petersburg Committee for Literacy. It is not clear what the words ‘and R’ refer to.

6 About the police search carried out at Yasnaya Polyana during Tolstoy’s absence. (Letters, I, 163).

7 On the Khodynka field (the site of the disaster during the coronation festivities for Nicholas II in 1896, when hundreds of people were trampled to death).

8 A veteran of the Crimean War. Tolstoy hoped to use his good offices and those of Orlov to ensure that his letter reached the Tsar.

9 Giselle.

10 Natasha, in which Sonya portrayed some features of Tolstoy in the person of Dublitsky (Letters, I, 168, fn.2).

11 A French tutor in the Behrs’ household, who brought birthday greetings and presents from the family.

12 One of the teachers at Tolstoy’s school.

13 A. S. Suvorin, a journalist and later editor of New Times. Suvorin was writing a biography of the Patriarch Nikon for Tolstoy’s journal.

14 A student who corrected the proofs of Tolstoy’s journal.

15 As Levin later did to Kitty in Anna Karenina.

16 An examining magistrate, later best man at Tolstoy’s wedding.

17 A member of the Moscow Censorship Committee whose delay in approving Tolstoy’s article (Note 2) angered Tolstoy.

18 Either N. A. Popov or M. A. Polivanov, both suitors of Sonya.

19 Either A. A. Obolenskaya, as Soviet commentators believe, or Aksinya, the mother of Tolstoy’s illegitimate son.

20 An article on Mohammed written by Sonya’s sister Yelizaveta and edited by Tolstoy for publication in his journal.

21 The pseudonym of a Slavophile authoress, referred to disparagingly in a letter to Druzhinin (Letters, I, 124).

22 The ‘P’ of Note 18.

23 V. S. Perfilyev (also Vasenka in the entry for 7 September).

24 Another reference to Sonya’s story Natasha, which she destroyed before her marriage.

25 Sonya’s father, who was expecting Tolstoy to propose to his eldest daughter Liza, not to Sonya.

26 Sonya’s sister.

27 In which Tolstoy explained what he had meant by the initials he had used in an earlier message (Note 15).

28 Letters, I, 168 – a revised version of the letter referred to in Note 27 which was not sent but has survived.

29 A friend of Sonya’s whose father was also a doctor.

30 Note 2. The article had just been passed by the censors.

31 A reference to negotiations with the Petersburg bookseller Stellovsky with a view to publishing Tolstoy’s collected works. The negotiations came to nothing at this stage.

32 Tolstoy’s successor as arbiter of the peace.

33 Zyabrev, headman of the village of Yasnaya Polyana.

34 After his marriage Tolstoy gave up teaching at his school (although lessons continued for a time with other teachers). The last issue of the journal (No. 12) appeared early the following year. Narod (‘the people’) refers here to the peasant children at the school.

35 Only the initial letter ‘n’ appears in the original, and it is not clear what word was intended.

36 The Tolstoys moved to Moscow on 23 December and stayed at Chevalier’s hotel until early February.

37 A nickname for Tanya, who was taking lessons from the Italian singer of that name.

1863–1887

The history of the 1860s in Tolstoy’s literary biography is very largely the history of writing, re-writing and publishing War and Peace. By the middle of the decade, with the appearance of the first collected edition of his works in four volumes, he felt himself to be at the height of his powers as a writer and took a condescending attitude to work which was not ‘creative’, in marked contrast to the previous few years when ‘useful’ activity took pride of place, and writing was subordinated to teaching and farming. During the 1860s he seldom left his country estate except for reasons connected with his novel – the need to consult books and archives in Moscow, or to visit the site of the famous Battle of Borodino and talk to survivors. In the course of the decade four children were born to the Tolstoys, and life at Yasnaya Polyana was a ceaseless round of activity for both husband and wife. Writing apart, there were routine affairs of the estate to attend to: pig-farming, horse-breeding and harvesting the various crops. A lover of trees, Tolstoy planted a birch wood which was later to become very valuable. He acquired a passion for bee-keeping. He dabbled briefly with sculpture and continued to play the piano. And of course he read widely and discussed his work with poets, philosophers and historians, as well as with his wife whose opinion he greatly valued. One event which stands out in this period is his unsuccessful defence before a military court of a private soldier who had been charged with striking an officer. The man was found guilty and executed, and the unhappy experience served to strengthen Tolstoy’s growing hostility to the government’s military and judicial institutions, which reached its literary climax many years later in Resurrection.

War and Peace was completed in 1869 and, not surprisingly, Tolstoy told his poet friend Fet that the hours seemed dead after his prolonged labours of six years. But Tolstoy was incapable of relaxing for long, and he soon began to embark on an extensive programme of reading, while slowly rediscovering at the same time his vocation, as he thought, to teach children and to write for them. He studied in earnest the language and literature of classical Greece, particularly Homer, Xenophon and Herodotus. He re-read the plays of Molière, Goethe and Shakespeare and the classics of the Russian stage. He applied his mind enthusiastically to Schopenhauer, Kant and Pascal. Despite a temporary revulsion from fiction, especially his own, he resumed work on The Decembrists, long since laid aside, and began a historical novel about the life and times of Peter the Great. His list of books which made the deepest impression on him during the years 1863 to 1878 included not only the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Anabasis and the Russian byliny, but also Les Misérables and the novels of Trollope, George Eliot and Mrs Ward. His main efforts, however, in 1871 and 1872 were concentrated on writing his Primer for peasant children. Not only did he write many stories himself, whose narrative interest, brevity and simplicity were calculated to make a direct moral appeal; he also translated and adapted fables and folk-tales from Greek, Jewish, Oriental and Arabic sources, compiled a section on arithmetic and provided passages for reading from the natural sciences, the Russian chronicles and the Lives of the Saints. Among his own compositions for the Primer were A Captive in the Caucasus and God Sees the Truth but Waits, which he was later to value more highly than all the rest of his fiction. In 1873 he returned to belles-lettres and began work on what he insisted on calling his first ‘novel’ – Anna Karenina – the final instalment of which was published in 1877.

The main events in Tolstoy’s life during the 1870s were his visits to the Bashkir province of Samara, first to recover from illness, and later to spend summer holidays with his family on an estate he had bought there. He gave widespread publicity to the serious famine in the Samara province in the summer of 1873 by writing to the newspapers and setting up a Famine Relief Fund. In the following year he lectured on his educational theories in Moscow and wrote an article on the subject. As he neared the end of his work on Anna Karenina and Levin’s spiritual crisis, he became increasingly preoccupied with Christianity and the Orthodox faith, and for a while he resumed his long-abandoned practice of going to church. He sought and achieved a reconciliation with Turgenev, visited the most important Russian monasteries and had numerous conversations on religious matters with monks and laymen. In 1879 he began writing A Confession which, although completed in 1882, was not allowed to be published in Russia. It is the best introduction to the spiritual struggle he was to wage for the remaining thirty years of his life and in the words of a distinguished critic ‘is one of the greatest and most lasting expressions of the human soul in the presence of the eternal mysteries of life and death’. For the next few years he published no more fiction, but wrote A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and A Translation and Harmony of the Four Gospels, both of which, for censorship reasons, first appeared abroad, and his comprehensive statement of faith What I Believe.

In the course of the 1870s six more children were born to the Tolstoys of whom two died in infancy. Their tenth child was born in 1879, but by then their marriage was already showing signs of strain which were to be seriously aggravated in the next decade, when Tolstoy made his first attempt to leave home. Two more children followed in the early 1880s, the second being his daughter Alexandra, who died in America as recently as 1979.

In 1881 the Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. Tolstoy wrote to the new Tsar, asking him to pardon his father’s murderers, but to no effect. In 1882 he took part in a three-day Moscow census and made his acquaintance at first hand with the Moscow slums. His article On the Moscow Census was published the same year, when he also began work on the social treatise What Then Must We Do?, which grew out of the same experiences of urban squalor and destitution. In 1884 some fragments of The Decembrists were published; in 1885 several popular tales including the well-known Where Love is, God is, and in 1886 the powerful and harrowing story The Death of Ivan Ilich, with its strikingly modern, existentialist flavour.

In 1882 Tolstoy was persuaded reluctantly to move to Moscow for the sake of the children’s education and after first renting accommodation near the Arbat, he eventually purchased a large wooden house with an attractive garden in a quiet part of the town near the Moscow river. For most of the rest of his life the family were to move backwards and forwards between their two homes, but it was always with a sense of relief that Tolstoy returned to the house where he was born (even though the main building itself had long been sold to meet his gambling debts). It was in Moscow in 1882 that Tolstoy began to study Hebrew, and it was there in the following year that he first met Vladimir Chertkov, a wealthy aristocrat, who had been profoundly influenced by Tolstoy’s religious and ethical ideas and who became the dominant figure in Tolstoy’s life after 1883. The friendship and cooperation between the two men led to the establishment of a publishing house, The Intermediary, to provide the people with edifying and morally improving literature at a nominal cost. In the course of the 1880s Tolstoy’s increasingly unorthodox beliefs became more rigid and resulted in his refusal to do jury service, his conversion (though not at first complete) to vegetarianism, his renunciation of blood sports and alcohol and his serious attempts (initially unsuccessful) to give up smoking. He also took up cobbling as a sign of his determination to live a simple and useful life, although from all accounts he never succeeded in mastering the craft.

The diaries for the period 1863–87 are disappointingly meagre, and it should be observed that the comparatively long entries for 1884 were written at a time when relations between Tolstoy and his wife were at their lowest ebb.

1863

3 January, Moscow    Only today has my toothache begun to ease up a bit. She talks about jealousy: one must respect people – I’m sure that it’s just talk, but one is constantly afraid. The epic manner is becoming the only natural one for me. Polivanov’s presence is disagreeable to me: I must put up with him as best I can. We’re alone in Moscow; I must faire des avances [make approaches]; but then suddenly there will be unhappiness and worse, whereas now it’s so good. She kissed me while I was writing. I felt it was in earnest; I looked round and she was crying. Tatyana is getting on my nerves. I’m astonished that I don’t need anybody; solitude surprises me, but doesn’t inhibit me; but to her it always seems that time is passing in vain.

5 January    Family happiness completely absorbs me, and it’s impossible to do anything. I must do something about the journal. It often occurs to me that happiness and all its special attributes are vanishing, and nobody knows it or will know it, and that such a thing never existed and never will exist for anybody, and yet I am conscious of it. I don’t like Polikushka.1 I read it at the Behrs’. I love her when I wake up at night or in the morning and see her – she looks at me and loves me. And no one – least of all I – prevents her from loving the way she knows, her own way. I love it when she sits close to me and we know that we love each other as much as we can, and she says: ‘Lyovochka’, and stops – ‘why are the pipes in the stove so straight?’, or ‘why do horses live such a long time?’ etc. I love it when we are alone for a long time and I say: ‘What are we to do, Sonya, what are we to do?’ And she laughs. I love it when she is angry with me and suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, her thoughts and words are sometimes harsh: ‘Leave me, I’m tired of you’; and a minute later she’s already smiling timidly at me again. I love it when she doesn’t see me and doesn’t know I’m there, and I love her in my own way. I love it when she is a girl in a yellow dress and sticks out her lower jaw and tongue; I love it when I see her head thrown back and her serious and frightened and childlike and passionate face; I love it when …

8 January    In the morning – her clothes. She challenged me to object to them, and I did object, and said so – tears and vulgar explanations. Sasha Kuzminsky2 is a nice young man, but he’s in a bad situation; too weak, too young, and surrounded by temptations. We patched things up somehow. I’m always dissatisfied with myself on these occasions, especially with the kisses – they are false patches. […] Over dinner the patch came off; tears and hysterics. The best indication that I love her is that I wasn’t angry, but I was depressed, terribly depressed, and sad. I went away to forget and to amuse myself. Aksakov is just the same self-satisfied upright hero with an eloquent mind. Stupid, consumptive Rayevsky. At home I felt depressed with her. I suppose a great deal has boiled up inside me unnoticed; I feel that she is depressed, but I’m more depressed still, and I can’t say anything to her – there’s nothing to say. I’m just cold, and I clutch at any work with ardour. She will stop loving me. I’m almost certain of that. The one thing that can save me is if she doesn’t fall in love with someone else, and that won’t be my doing. She says I’m kind. I don’t like to hear it; it’s just for that reason that she will stop loving me. […]

15 January, Moscow    A new diary: but there’s nothing new. I’m still the same. I’m often just as dissatisfied with myself, and just as firmly believe in myself and expect things of myself … If only I were not happy! All the conditions for happiness have come together for me. Often the only thing missing (all this time) is the awareness that I’ve done everything that I ought to have done in order to enjoy to the full what has been given me, and to repay others, the whole world, by my work for what they have given me.

Got up late; we’re on friendly terms. The last squabble has left some small (imperceptible) traces – or perhaps time has. Every such squabble, however trivial, is a scar on love. A momentary feeling of passion, vexation, self-love or pride will pass, but a scar, however small, will remain for ever on the best thing that exists in the world – love. I shall know this and guard our happiness, and you know it too. Corrected some proofs. […] At home I suddenly snarled at Sonya because she wouldn’t leave me alone, and I felt ashamed and frightened. At dinner we were in good spirits. Mamma. Tanya – the charm of naiveté, egoism and sensibility. […]

23 January    Somebody told me quite truly that I’m wrong not to use the time for writing. It’s a long time since I can remember such a strong desire – and a calm, self-assured desire – to write. I have no subjects, that is no one specially asking to be written, but, mistakes or not, I think I could take any subject. The type of Westerner-professor who has acquired for himself by assiduous work in his youth a certificate entitling him to intellectual idleness and stupidity comes to mind in various aspects, as opposed to the man who has retained to maturity his boldness of thought and the indivisibility of thought, feeling and action.3 And another situation: the love of a husband, which makes strict demands on itself, all-absorbing and becoming the business of his whole life, in conflict with the attractions of the waltz, outward glitter, vanity and the poetry of the moment. Polenka Sachs and perhaps the present drama Sin and misfortune.4 I’ve never experienced a stronger impression, or one so unspoiled by a single false note. Corrected the proofs of The Cossacks – it’s terribly weak. Probably for that reason the public will be pleased with it. I’ve been feverish and idle all the time, and weighed down by it. Relations with my wife are the best possible. The ebbs and flows don’t surprise me or frighten me. From time to time, including today, I still have the fear that she’s young and can’t understand or love much in me, and that she suppresses much in herself for my sake, and instinctively debits all these sacrifices to my account. Today was a day of activity; I went to Auntie’s and the Gorchakovs’ (Hélène is wonderful) and Fet’s (he has a wife too). The main change in me during this time is that I’m beginning to love people in moderation. Before it was all or nothing, but now love’s real place is occupied, and relations are simpler. Friends at the theatre. I was glad they all liked her.

25 January    Morning. Yesterday we had a quarrel, allegedly over the big room but really because we [one indecipherable word] and because we are both idle. I used to think before, and now as a married man I’m more than ever convinced that in life, in all human relationships, the basis of everything is work – feelings in action – and reasoning and thought not only do not govern feelings and actions, but masquerade as feelings. Even circumstances don’t govern feelings, but feelings govern circumstances, i.e. provide a choice from among thousands of facts …

8 February, Yasnaya Polyana    We’re at Yasnaya. Islenyev and Seryozha interrupted us, but still I feel so well, so well; I love her so. The estate and the affairs of the journal are in good shape. Only the students are a burden because of the unnaturalness of our relations and their involuntary envy, for which I don’t reproach them. How clear it all is to me now. It was the passion of youth – a farce almost – which I can’t go on with now that I’m grown up. She is everything. She doesn’t know and couldn’t understand how she is transforming me – incomparably more so than I her. Only not consciously. Consciously both she and I are powerless.

On the journey it occurred to me that the discovery of laws in science is only the discovery of a new method of looking at things whereby what was previously wrong seems right and logical, as a result of which (this new view of things) other aspects become more obscure. I understand that iron is cold and a fur coat warm, that the sun rises and sets, the body dies and the soul is immortal. From the new point of view I must forget about fur coats and iron and not understand what a fur coat or iron is, but see atoms attracting and repelling and so disposed that they become good and bad conductors of something called heat, or must forget that the sun still rises and sets, forget the dawn and the clouds, and imagine to myself that the earth moves and I with it. (I can explain a lot along certain lines by such a view, but this view is not the truth, it is one-sided.) For chemistry still more so. Either I have to forget that I have a soul and a body, or I have to remember that I have a body with nerves. For medicine it’s been a success, for psychology the opposite.

23 February    Sent off my article5 – it’s good, although careless. I’ve started writing.6 It won’t do. I’ve been looking through my papers – a swarm of thoughts, and a return, or an attempt at a return, to lyricism. That’s good. I can’t write, it seems, without a set idea and without passion. Les Misérables7 – powerful. […]

1 March    […] We recently began to feel that our happiness is frightening. Death – and that’s the end of it all. Can it really be the end? God. We prayed. I wanted to feel that happiness is not chance, but My destiny.

3 March    Twice we almost quarrelled in the evening. Almost. Today she feels bored and hemmed in. The foolish seek the storm – the young, but not the foolish. I’m afraid of this mood more than anything in the world. I’ve been absorbed in the estate the whole day. I can’t get on with The Gelding8 – it’s false. But I can’t change it. Everything, everything that people do, they do in accordance with the demands of nature as a whole. Only the mind fabricates for each act its own imaginary causes, which in the case of one man it calls convictions – faith – and in the case of peoples (in history) ideas. This is one of the oldest and most harmful mistakes. The mind’s game of chess goes on independently of life, and life of it. The only influence is the mould that human nature receives from such an exercise. One can only be educated physically. Mathematics is physical education. So-called self-sacrifice and virtue are only the satisfaction of one morbidly developed propensity. The ideal is harmony. Only art feels this. And only that is real which takes as its motto: there are no guilty people in the world. He who is happy is right! The self-sacrificing person is more blind and cruel than the others. Everything is going wrong in The Gelding except for the coachman who is whipped and the galloping of the horses.

24 March    I love her still more and more. Today is the seventh month, and I’m experiencing a feeling which I haven’t experienced for a long time, not since the beginning – a feeling of nothingness compared to her. She is so impossibly pure and good and chaste for me. At moments like this I feel that I don’t possess her, despite the fact that she gives herself completely to me. I don’t possess her because I don’t dare, I don’t feel myself worthy. I’m nervously irritable and so not fully happy. Something torments me. Jealousy of the man who could be fully worthy of her. I’m not worthy.

1 April    I sat in Auntie’s room today; she was asleep. I began to recall an earlier conversation with Serdobolsky; Easter is quite different this year, with tedious plans for the estate, and I began to detest myself. I’m a dissolute egoist. But I’m happy. I must work on myself here and now. Not much is needed to consolidate this happiness. (1) order, (2) activity, (3) resoluteness, (4) perseverance, (5) desiring good and doing good to everyone. I’ll keep an eye on myself in these respects.

2 June    This whole time has been for me a depressing time of physical sleep and – whether for that reason or independently – moral sleep too, depressing and without hope. I’ve been thinking that I have no strong interests or passions (how is that possible? And why?). I’ve been thinking that I’m getting old and dying; thinking that it’s terrible that I don’t love anything. I’ve been horrified at myself and the fact that my interests are money or vulgar prosperity. It’s been a periodic sleep. I think I’ve woken up now. I love her, and the future, and myself and my life. You can’t go back on what has happened. What seems weakness may be the source of strength. I’m reading Goethe, and thoughts are swarming in my head.

18 June    Where am I, the I whom I knew and loved, who will sometimes come to the surface and gladden me and frighten me? I’m puny and insignificant. And I’ve been like that since I married the woman I love. Everything written in this book is almost a lie – deceitfulness. The thought that she is here reading over my shoulder detracts from and mars the truth of what I write. Today her evident pleasure at talking and attracting Erlenwein’s attention9 and an insane night suddenly raised me to my old heights of truth and power. You have only to read this and say: ‘yes, I know – jealousy’ – and to comfort me again, and to do something else to comfort me, in order to throw me back again into all the triviality of life which I’ve hated since I was young. And I’ve been living in it for nine months. It’s terrible. I’m a gambler and a drunkard. In the intoxication of estate management I’ve ruined nine irretrievable months which could have been the best of my life, but which I made almost the worst. What do I need? To live happily – i.e. to be loved by her and myself; but all this time I’ve hated myself. How many times have I written: ‘Today it’s all over.’ I won’t write it now. My God, help me. Let me always live in this awareness of Thee and of my own strength. An insane night. I’m looking for some way to hurt you, against my will. This is bad and will pass, but don’t be angry, I can’t help loving you.

I must add something for her – she will read it; I won’t write anything for her that is untrue, but, from a choice of many things, something I wouldn’t have written for myself alone. The fact that she might like another man, and a very insignificant one, is understandable to me, and ought not to seem unjust to me, however intolerable it is, because for these last nine months I have been the most insignificant, weak, absurd and trivial man myself.

Today the moon raised me upwards, but how, nobody knows. Not for nothing did I think today that the same law of gravity which attracts matter to earth also exists for what we call the spirit, attracting it to the spiritual sun. A bee only flies in the sun. The queen bee works and fertilises eggs in the dark, and mates and plays (we call it idleness) in the sun. I’ll write tomorrow.

I’m sitting down to write again for the third time. It’s awful, terrible and absurd to link one’s happiness with material conditions – a wife, children, health, wealth. The holy fool is right. One can have a wife, children, health, etc. but that’s not the point. Lord have mercy and help me.

5 August    I’m writing now, not for myself alone as formerly, and not for the two of us as recently, but for him.10 On 27 June during the night we were both particularly disturbed. She had stomach-ache and was tossing about, but we thought it was the result of eating berries. In the morning she became worse and at 5 o’clock we woke up, having decided the previous evening that I should go to meet our people. She was in her dressing-gown, feverish and crying out; then it passed and she smiled and said: ‘it’s all right’. I sent for Anna, more in order to do what I could, but I didn’t believe it was necessary. I was both anxious and calm, occupied with trivialities as one is before a battle or at the moment of approaching death. I was annoyed with myself for feeling so little. I wanted to go to Tula and do everything as properly as possible.

I travelled with Tanya and Sasha, and we felt somehow unnatural. I was calm and didn’t want to let myself be so. In Tula I found it strange that Kopylov wanted to talk about politics as usual, and the chemists were sealing up their little boxes. We set off with Marya Ivanovna (Seryozha’s midwife). We drove up home and there was no one to be seen. Auntie, who at first hadn’t wanted me to go and was afraid, came out to meet me distraught, animated, frightened, but with kindly eyes. ‘How are things?’ – ‘How good that you’ve come, mon cher. The pangs have begun.’ I went in. The darling, how beautiful she was with her expression of seriousness, honesty, strength and emotion. She was wearing a dressing-gown which was open, and a little embroidered jacket; her black hair was untidy – with a feverish, blotchy red face and big burning eyes she walked about and looked at me. ‘Have you brought them?’ ‘Yes. How are things?’ ‘Terribly fierce pangs. Anna Petrovna isn’t here, but Aksinya is.’ She kissed me simply and calmly. While people were swarming about, the pangs started again. She seized hold of me. I kissed her as I had done in the morning, but she wasn’t thinking about me, and there was something serious and stern about her. Marya Ivanovna went into the bedroom with her and came out. ‘Labour has begun,’ she said softly and solemnly and with concealed joy, like an actor taking a benefit when the curtain has gone up. She kept walking up and down, pottering about round the cupboards, getting things ready and then sitting down for a bit, and there was the same calm and solemn glow in her eyes. There were a few more pangs, and each time I held her and felt her body trembling, stretching and contracting; and the impression her body made on me was quite, quite different from previously, both before and during our marriage. In between times I ran about, arranging for the sofa on which I was born to be moved into her room, etc., and I still had the same feeling of indifference, reproachfulness because of it and irritation. I wanted to think out and do everything as quickly, thoroughly and as well as possible. They laid her down and she herself began to think of … (I haven’t finished this and I can’t write any more about this present agony).

Her character gets worse each day; I can recognise both Polenka and Mashenka in her,11 with her grumbling and spiteful taunts. It’s true this usually happens when she is not so well, but her unfairness and quiet egoism frighten and torment me. She has heard from someone and got it firmly in her head that husbands don’t love sick wives, and as a result has consoled herself with the belief that she is right. Or else she never loved me, but was deceiving herself. I’ve looked through her diary – suppressed anger with me glows beneath words of tenderness. It’s often the same in real life. If this is so, and it’s all a mistake on her part – it’s terrible. To give up everything – not a dissipated bachelor’s life at Dusseau’s and mistresses like other married men, but the poetry of love and ideas and work for the people – and to exchange it all for the poetry of the family hearth, and egoism in what concerns everything except one’s own family; and in place of everything to get all the worries of a tavern, worry about baby powder and preserves, as well as grumbling, and without anything that brightens up family life, without love and without a peaceful and proud family happiness, but only outbursts of tenderness, kisses, etc.! I’m terribly depressed, I still don’t believe it, but then I wouldn’t be ill, wouldn’t be distraught all day – quite the contrary.

In the morning I come in happy and in good spirits, and see the Countess who is in a bad temper and whose hair is being combed by her maid Dushka, and I think of Mashenka when times were bad for her, and everything goes to pieces, and like someone possessed I’m afraid of everything, and I can see that only in a place where I am alone do I feel well and in a poetic mood. I get kisses, tender from habit, and then the nagging begins at Dushka, Auntie, Tanya, me and everybody, and I can’t endure it calmly because it’s all not simply bad, but terrible, in comparison with what I desire. I don’t know what I wouldn’t do for the sake of our happiness, but people will contrive to sully and demean our relations and allege that I grudge giving away a horse or a peach. There’s no point in explaining. There’s nothing to explain … But the slightest glimmer of understanding and feeling, and I’m completely happy again, and believe that she understands things the way I do. People believe what they earnestly desire. And I’m pleased that it’s only I who suffers agony. Like Mashenka, she has the same trait of morbid and capricious self-assurance and submission to what she imagines to be her unhappy fate.

It’s already one o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep, still less go and sleep in her room, with the feeling that oppresses me; for when someone can hear her she will groan, but now she is snoring peacefully. And she will wake up in the full assurance that I’m unjust and that she is the unfortunate victim of my fickle whims – about feeding and looking after the baby.12 Even her father is of the same opinion. I haven’t given her my diary to read, but I’m not writing everything in it. The most terrible thing is that I must say nothing and sulk, however much I hate and despise the condition. To talk to her now is impossible, but perhaps all could still be explained. No, she never loved me and doesn’t love me. I don’t feel so sorry about it now, but why did I have to be so cruelly deceived?

6 October    All that is over now and it was all untrue. I’m happy with her: but I’m terribly dissatisfied with myself. I’m sliding, sliding down the hill of death, and hardly feel I have the strength to stop. But I don’t want death, I want and love immortality. I don’t have to choose. The choice has been made long ago. Literature – art, pedagogy and the family. Inconsistency, timidity, laziness, weakness – these are my enemies.

Notes

1 The story he had begun in Brussels.

2 A cousin of the Behrs sisters, who later married Tatyana.

3 Believed to be the germ of the idea of the Koznyshov–Levin relationship in Anna Karenina.

4 Druzhinin’s story and Ostrovsky’s drama respectively. Tolstoy had just seen the Ostrovsky play a day or two before.

5 Progress and the Definition of Education, published in the final issue of Yasnaya Polyana.

6 Probably Strider.

7 Hugo’s novel was the one work which Tolstoy claims to have made an ‘enormous’ impression on him between the ages of thirty-five and fifty.

8 The original title of Strider.

9 A teacher at the school in Baburino. Sonya refers to her husband’s jealousy of him in her autobiography.

10 Tolstoy’s eldest son was born on 28 June 1863.

11 Pelageya Yushkova, Tolstoy’s guardian in Kazan, and his sister Marya Nikolayevna.

12 A reference to Tolstoy’s disapproval of his wife’s refusal, because of mastitis, to feed her baby herself.

1864

16 September, Yasnaya Polyana    It will soon be a year since I stopped writing in this book. And a good year. My relations with Sonya have grown stronger and firmer. We love each other, i.e. we are dearer to each other than all other people in the world, and we can look each other in the face. No secrets, and nothing to be ashamed of. Meanwhile I’ve begun a novel1 and have written about ten printer’s sheets,2 but now I’m in the stage of correcting and revising. It’s agonising. My pedagogical interests have receded into the distance. My son is very remote from me. Recently I remembered the diary I began about Sonya as a mother;3 I must finish it for the children.

For the novel.4

(1) He loves to torment the person he loves – everything irritates him.

(2) Father and son hate each other. Ill at ease in other people’s presence.

Notes

1 1805, the genesis of War and Peace.

2 Ten quires.

3 Probably a reference to the diary entry for 5 August 1863; if Tolstoy intended to keep a separate diary about Sonya and motherbood, nothing came of the intention.

4 Both entries refer to the old Prince Bolkonsky in 1805.

1865

7 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Health so-so. This is the third day I’ve held my ground without either relaxing or exerting my will too much. I’m writing and revising.1 Everything is clear, but the amount of work still to do terrifies me. It’s good to set limits to one’s future work. Then, in view of the important things to come, you don’t stop and revise trivial things endlessly. Sonya has been ill. Seryozha is very ill, and is coughing. I’m beginning to love him very much. A completely new feeling. All is well on the estate.

9 March    I’ve been writing and revising both days. Today I couldn’t after tea. There’s a certain coolness between Sonya and me. I wait calmly for it to pass. I’ve been reading Goethe’s Faust. Poetry of thought and poetry which has as its object that which can’t be expressed by any other art. But we want to improve it by divorcing it from the reality of the painting, psychology, etc.

17 March    Went to Tula. Went to a funeral at Seryozha’s.2 Even for his grief man must have rails laid down to go along – weeping and wailing, requiem masses, etc. Yesterday I saw in the snow the deep footprint of a dog in the shallow footprint of a man. Why does its weight rest on so small a surface? So that it shouldn’t eat up all the hares, but just as many as it needs. That’s the wisdom of God; no it’s not wisdom, not intelligence. It’s the instinct of the deity. We have this instinct in us too. But our intelligence is our ability to deviate from instinct and to understand these deviations. These thoughts came to me with frightening clarity, with force, and with delight. Today I went to the Pashkovs’. The children are ill, and so is Sonya. Haven’t written anything for about four days. I did today. I once got angry with a German, and it took me a long time to forgive him. I’m reading Raguse’s Mémoires.3 Very useful to me.

19 March    I’ve become engrossed in the history of Napoleon and Alexander. The idea of writing a psychological history of the romance4 of Alexander and Napoleon has swept over me like a cloud of joy and the awareness of the opportunity to do a great thing. All the baseness, all the empty words, all the folly, all the contradictions of them themselves and of the people round them. Napoleon as a man – mixed up and ready to renounce the 18 Brumaire before the Assembly. De nos jours les peuples sont trop éclairés pour produire quelque chose de grand [In our time the people are too enlightened to produce anything great].5 Alexander of Macedon called himself the son of Jupiter, and people believed him. The whole Egyptian expedition – vainglorious French villainy. The – deliberate – falseness of all the bulletins. The peace of Pressburg escamoté [achieved by fraud]. At the bridge of Arcole he fell into a puddle instead of seizing the standard. A poor rider. Carried off pictures and statues in the Italian war. Loved to ride round the battlefield. Rejoiced in the dead and wounded. Marriage to Josephine – success in society. Three times corrected the bulletin on the battle of Rivoli – lied each time. Still a man at first, and strong in his onesidedness; later indecisive – it must be done! But how? You are ordinary people, but I can see my star in the heavens. He’s not interesting, but the crowds are who surround him, and on whom he makes an impression. At first one-sidedness and beau jeu [favourable conditions] compared with the Marats and the Barras’, then cautiously feeling his way – self-sufficiency and good fortune – and then madness – faire entrer dans son lit la fille des Césars [getting the daughter of Caesars to share his bed]. Complete madness, growing infirmity and insignificance on St Helena. Lies and greatness only because the dimension was great, but when the field of action became small, his insignificance became obvious. And a shameful death!

Alexander, a clever, amiable, sensitive man, seeking from on high greatness of dimension, seeking human heights; renouncing the throne and approving of, or not preventing the murder of Paul (it can’t be). Plans for the renascence of Europe. Austerlitz, tears, the wounded. Naryshkina unfaithful. Speransky, emancipation of the serfs. Tilsit – intoxication with greatness. Erfurt. The period till 1812 I don’t know about. Greatness as a man, vacillations. Victory, triumph, greatness, grandeur, which frightened him, and the search for human greatness – greatness of mind. Confusion over outward things, but lucidity of mind. And a soldierly vein – manoeuvres and stern measures. Outward confusion, but clarity of mind. Death. If it was murder, that would be best.

I must write my novel and do the work for it.

20 March    Wonderful weather. I’m well. Rode to Tula on horseback. Great thoughts! The plan for the history of Napoleon and Alexander hasn’t lost its appeal. An epic poem, the hero of which should by rights be a man round whom everything is grouped, and the hero should be that man. Read Marmont. V. A. Perovsky’s captivity.6 Davoût – put him to death.7 Markov’s review8 – poor. He thinks well of the idea, yet is cross. Well, what would you do yourself? But my powers, my powers are frightening! Yazykov said that my speeches are too explicit, too long. He’s right. Shorter, shorter.

21 March    Wonderful weather. Sonya is ill. I get annoyed that she’s so weak when she’s ill. Seryozha worries me with his illness. The livestock farming amuses me and it’s going well. I’m still reading Raguse and making notes. In the evening, wrote the bridge scene9 – poor.

23 March    Wonderful weather. […] Only wrote a little in the evening, but quite well. I can. Apart from that there have been thoughts all this time about something new and more important, and a feeling of dissatisfaction with the old. I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine. I must leave out more. Tomorrow I’ll try a description of Bilibin.10  […] One of the most important points about writing is the contrast between the person who feels poetry and the one who doesn’t.

25 March    Seryozha is with us. I’m unwell – biliousness. Told Seryozha about Napoleon. Did no writing. Read Raguse. Just like Faust – builds factories after battles and is content. The poetry of an old man’s labours. I must do it.11

13 August12    Russia’s national and international task is to introduce to the world the idea of a social structure without landed property.

La propriété c’est le vol [Property is theft] will remain truer than the truth of the British constitution as long as mankind exists. This is an absolute truth, but there are also relative truths – supplementary ones – which stem from it. The first of these relative truths is the Russian people’s attitude to property. The Russian people rejects that form of property which is the most deeply rooted, depends least on hard work, and inhibits more than any other form the right of other people to acquire property – namely landed property. This truth is not a dream – it is a fact expressed in the communes of the peasants and the Cossacks. This truth is understood alike by the Russian intellectual and the peasant who says: ‘register us as Cossacks and the land will be free.’ This idea has a future. On it alone can the Russian revolution be based. The Russian revolution will not be against the Tsar and despotism, but against landed property. It will say: ‘Rob and steal from me – the man – anything you like, but leave us the land.’ Autocracy cannot prevent this order of things, but is actually helping it to come about. (I dreamed all this on 13 August.)

19 September, Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye13    I’m restless. I don’t know whether I’m ill and because of illness can’t think properly and work, or whether I’ve let myself go to such an extent that I can’t work. If only I could work properly, how happy I could be. […]

20 September    Couldn’t write in the morning. Slept badly. Walked a bit. Still the same feverish condition. Read Merimée’s Chronique de Charles IX.14 Strange, his intellectual link with Pushkin. Very clever and sensitive, but no talent. […]

23 September, Cheryomoshnya    In bed all day. A bath revived me. Read Consuelo.15 What perverse nonsense, full of phrases from science, philosophy, art and morals. A pie made of stale dough and rancid butter with truffles, sterlets and pineapples.

24 September    Better. Read my novel aloud.16 They weren’t interested. But it seemed to me good enough not to be worth revising. Must impart to Nicolas more love of life and fear of death on the bridge. And to Andrey – memories of the battle of Brünn.

26 September, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve begun to do gymnastics. I feel very good. Sonya and I are back home. There probably isn’t more than one person in a million as happy as the two of us are together. Apropos of the schooling of dear Masha,17 I thought a lot about my pedagogical principles. It’s my duty to write down everything I know about the matter.

27 September    […] Read the stupid Julia Kavanagh18 and went for a walk. […]

29 September    Health not good – lumbago. Wrote to Seryozha and the Dyakovs. Spent all day writing ‘the battle’19 – poor. It won’t do – it’s not right. Read Trollope.20 Good, if it weren’t for the diffuseness.

30 September    Went out hunting early in the new snow, enjoyed myself and killed a hare. Wrote to Andrey Yevstafyevich.21 Read Trollope, good. A novelist’s poetry is contained (1) in the interest of the combination of events – Braddon,22 my Cossacks, my future work; (2) in the picture of manners and customs based on a historical event – The Odyssey, The Iliad, 1805; (3) in the beauty and cheerfulness of the situations – Pickwick, The Hunting Ground, and (4) in the characters of the people – Hamlet, my future works; Apollon Grigoryev – dissoluteness, Chicherin – an obtuse mind, Sukhotin – the narrow-mindedness of success, Nikolenka23 – laziness and Stolypin, Lanskoy and Stroganov – the honesty of dullness.

1 October    Still doing gymnastics, copying up the days and not writing. Went hunting – nothing. The poetry of work and success hasn’t been tackled by anybody anywhere. Reading The Bertrams – wonderful.

2 October    Health good. Went hunting in vain. Did some writing. But I despair for myself. Trollope overwhelms me with his skill. I console myself that he has his skill and I have mine. To know what is mine – or rather what isn’t mine – that’s the main thing about art. I must work like a pianist.

3 October    Yesterday and today I worked intensively, though fruitlessly, and now today I’m liverish and feel gloomy. It disheartens me. I must curb my volupté [passion] for reading and day-dreaming. I must use these powers for writing, alternating it with physical work. Rode round my woods again, and found nothing. Finished Trollope. Too much that is conventional.

4 October    Rode to Kamenny and Trubitsynsky. Shot at a fox and missed. Sonya is pregnant. Seryozha still has diarrhoea. Health not quite recovered. Did no writing.

15 October    In a bilious mood; was angry with a huntsman. The hunting is awful. Thought out two chapters in full. No success with Brykov and Dolokhov.24 Not working much. Had words with Sonya yesterday. It’s no use – she’s pregnant.

16 October    Killed two white hares. Read Guizot-Witt’s25 arguments for religion and wrote a first article about an idea given to me by Montaigne.26

17 October    Before dinner an unsuccessful hunt. Didn’t much want to write. And don’t want to se battre les flancs [drive myself hard] for nothing. Out hunting I saw a place for Dolokhov, and now it’s clear.

20 October    I’m exhausting my strength hunting. I’ve been re-reading and revising. Things are getting on. I’ve sketched out the Dolokhov scene. Sonya and I are very friendly.

21 October    The same as yesterday. Towards evening I thought about Dolokhov. Read Dickens. Bella is Tanya.27

1 November    The same strict hygiene. Completely fit, as I seldom am. Wrote quite a lot. Put the finishing touches to Bilibin, and am satisfied. Reading de Maistre.28  The idea of a free surrender of power.

2 November    Same hygiene. At night, heavy breathing and a dry mouth and by morning a rough tongue. Very well during the day – a good selle [stool] in the evening. Had a modest supper today. Finished writing Bilibin. The Islenyevs have gone. Re-read The Cossacks and Yasnaya Polyana with pleasure.

5 November    […] Wrote in a new way – so as not to have to revise. I’m thinking about a comedy.29 As a general rule I must try the new way, without revisions. Had supper – to no purpose, it seems.

8, 9 November    A milder diet yesterday. Strict again today. Health good, especially my head. Good thoughts in profusion yesterday. Wrote the part before the battle30  and got a clear idea of all that is to come. Took the important decision today not to publish before finishing the whole novel.

10, 11, 12 November    I’m writing; health good, and I’m no longer watching myself. Nearly finished the third part. Much is becoming quite clear. Killed two hares in half an hour.

Notes

1 The first three chapters of Part 2 of 1805.

2 Of Seryozha’s son, Tolstoy’s nephew.

3 Mémoires du maréchal Marmont, duc de Raguse, published in Paris 1856–7 after his death. A marshal in Napoleon’s army, he had been jointly responsible for surrendering Paris to the allies in 1814, and in his memoirs he attempted to justify his conduct which had made Napoleon’s abdication inevitable. These memoirs provided Tolstoy with several of the details about Napoleon and Alexander in the next entry for 19 March (e.g. that he was a poor rider).

4 The meaning is not entirely clear; the Russian word roman can mean both ‘novel’ and ‘romance’.

5 These words were spoken by Napoleon on the day after his coronation, as recounted by Raguse.

6 V. A. Perovsky was captured at the Battle of Borodino and taken to France where he remained until the allies took Paris in 1814. His memoirs of 1812 were published in Russian Archives, No. 3, 1865.

7 Perovsky’s account of his interrogation by Davoût and his last-minute reprieve form the gist of the scene in War and Peace where Pierre is similarly interrogated. See 1857, Note 107.

8 Of The Cossack (Notes of the Fatherland, 1865). Markov reproached Tolstoy for his allegedly inaccurate picture of the life of the people of the Caucasus.

9 Crossing the bridge at Enns.

10 The witty Russian diplomat in post in Vienna in 1805.

11 Tolstoy’s intention of comparing Napoleon and Faust towards the end of their lives was never realised.

12 This entry is not from the diary proper, but from one of Tolstoy’s notebooks.

13 The Tolstoys moved to the estate of the late Nikolay Tolstoy on 26 June and stayed there until October, with short visits to his sister at Pokrovskoye and to his friend Dyakov at Cheryomoshnya.

14 Mérimée’s historical novel about the persecution of the Huguenots in France.

15 George Sand’s long novel of musical life in eighteenth-century Austria and Bohemia.

16 To the Dyakovs’, with whom Tolstoy was staying.

17 The Dyakovs’ daughter.

18 An English authoress (1824–77) of novels and stories, especially of French society life.

19 Schöngraben (Chapters 17–21 of Part 2 of the first volume of War and Peace).

20 The Bertrams. ‘Diffuseness’ (misspelt) is in English in the original.

21 Tolstoy’s father-in-law.

22 Tolstoy had two of Mrs Braddon’s novels in his library at Yasnaya Polyana, including Lady Audley’s Secret and apparently had a high opinion of them.

23 Tolstoy’s late brother.

24 A scene from the draft versions of the description of the Battle of Schöngraben which was transformed in the final version into the episode of Captain Timokhin’s attack.

25 The historian Guizot’s daughter, Henriette de Witt, who wrote religious works and books for children.

26 A short fragment entitled On Religion, which was Tolstoy’s first attempt to formulate his religious views coherently.

27 The heroine of Our Mutual Friend, whom Tolstoy compares to his sister-in-law.

28 Tolstoy was reading de Maistre’s Correspondance diplomatique 1811–1817 (Paris, 1861), and also a book by Albert Blanc on the political memoirs and diplomatic correspondence of de Maistre. For a full account of de Maistre’s influence on Tolstoy see Isaiah Berlin’s The Hedgehog and the Fox, 1953.

29 His thoughts evidently came to nothing.

30 The camp scenes before Schöngraben.

1870

2 February, Yasnaya Polyana1    I can hear the critics: ‘the sleigh ride at Christmas, Bagration’s attack, the hunt, the dinner, the dancing – all this is good; but his theory of history, his philosophy is bad; it is tasteless and cheerless.2

A certain cook was preparing dinner. The offal, bones and blood he threw out or poured into the yard. The dogs stood by the kitchen door and rushed to seize hold of what the cook threw away. When he killed a chicken or a calf and threw out the blood and the intestines or when he threw the bones away, the dogs were pleased and said: ‘He’s cooked a good meal. He’s a good cook.’ But when the cook started to shell or peel eggs, chestnuts or artichokes and to throw the shells and peelings into the yard, the dogs rushed up, took a sniff and turned their noses away and said: ‘He used to cook a good meal, but now he’s gone off; he’s a bad cook.’ But the cook continued to cook dinner, and those for whom it was cooked ate it up.

However much people say that in drama, action should take precedence over conversation, the characters must express themselves in words to prevent drama from becoming ballet.

Good speakers make bad actors, and therefore the hero ought not to express himself in words. The more he says, the less he will be believed. But if other people speak, and he doesn’t, the attention will be directed on to them and not on to him.

Comedy – a comic hero – is possible, but tragedy is terribly difficult, given the psychological development of our time. For that reason it’s only possible to talk about Iphigenia, Egmont, Henry IV, Coriolanus, etc.3 in textbooks. There is no possibility of reading or producing them. For that reason ungifted imitators can imitate Pushkin’s (weak) imitation Boris Godunov. For that reason we have blank verse, about which it will remain undoubtedly true what Pushkin said for the benefit of himself in future:

‘Listen, old man, every time I look at this castle of Retler’s it occurs to me that if it’s prose, then it’s bad prose.’4

The taking of Kherson by Vladimir – an epic.

Menshikov marries his daughter to Peter II, his banishment and death – a drama.

3 February    A system, a philosophical system, not only contains errors of thought, but errors of the system itself.

In whatever form you wrap up your thoughts, these thoughts, for the man who really understands them, will just be the expression of a new outlook on the world by a philosopher.

In order to say what you have to say intelligibly, speak sincerely; and to speak sincerely, speak just as the thought comes to you.

Even in the case of great thinkers who have left systems behind them, the reader has to take the system apart laboriously in order to assimilate the essence of the writer, and has to piece together for himself the fragmented parts, and relate them to the man.

This is the case with Plato, Descartes, Spinoza and Kant. Schopenhauer says that his system is a circle (he says an arch), and that to understand it it is necessary to go through it several times.

In the case of weak thinkers like Hegel or Cousin,5 once you have taken the system apart, you come into direct contact with an empty person, from whom there is nothing to take.

But the masses love a system. The masses want to seize on the whole truth, and since they cannot understand it, they readily believe it.

Goethe says: truth repels, but delusion attracts, because truth presents us as limited, while delusion presents us as omnipotent. Moreover, truth repels because it is fragmented and incomprehensible, while delusion is coherent and logical.6

Russian dramatic literature has two model examples of one of the many kinds of drama -the one that is the weakest and most trivial, the satirical: The Misfortune of Being Clever and The Government Inspector. The rest of the enormous field – not of satire, but of poetry – is still untouched.

14 February    One of the best examples of how the causes of people’s actions which are apparent to us (and seem so to the people themselves) are not causes at all because they do not tally with the consequences, but have other causes which do tally with the consequences, is fashion. The cause of the continual change in dress fashions is the desire of the very wealthy to be different from the very poor. But it’s clear that this purpose is absurd, because there are many distinguishing features apart from fashion, and the purpose is not achieved, because everything is changed again at once. But a purpose not apparent to those involved is achieved: the discarded clothing clothes all the poor population of London, Paris and the big cities. And this is evidently no accident, because where there is a big concentration of people, a proletariat, there are also rapid changes of fashions which provide second-hand materials cheaply for the poor. And where there are fewer proletariat, the movements of fashion are slower, and where there are more, the movements are quicker.

Notes

1 The entries for 1870 are not part of a diary, but are written on separate sheets of paper.

2 The reference is probably to an article of 1870 by the critic Shelgunov, which followed earlier critics in sharply attacking the philosophical digressions in War and Peace.

3 The tragedies of Goethe and Shakespeare respectively.

4 A not entirely accurate rendering of an epigram of Pushkin’s directed at a poem in blank verse by Zhukovsky.

5 A French professor of philosophy, whose lectures on Hegel at the Sorbonne in the 1820s attracted great attention.

6 In his Sprüche in Prosa.

1873

5 November, Yasnaya Polyana    The artist of sounds, lines, colours, words and even thoughts is in a terrible position when he doesn’t believe in the importance of expressing his thoughts. What does this belief depend on? Not love of his thoughts. Love is disturbing. But this belief is comforting. And sometimes I have it and sometimes I don’t. Why? It’s a mystery.

6 November    […] As a young man I began prematurely to analyse everything and to destroy unmercifully. I was often afraid, and thought – I’ll have nothing left intact; but here I am getting old, and I still have a lot intact and unharmed – more than other people. Perhaps the instrument of my analysis was sharp or perhaps my original choice was correct, but at all events I haven’t destroyed anything more for a long time; and I still have intact and unshaken my love for one woman; children and everything to do with them; science and art – true science and art, without any considerations of grandeur, but with consideration for the true reality of the unsophisticated; enthusiasm for the country, and at times for Sèvres china – is that all? It’s an awful lot. My contemporaries who believed in everything when I was destroying everything haven’t got 1/100th part of that. […]

17 November    […] Read Verne.1 Movement without gravity is unthinkable. Movement is heat. Heat without gravity is unthinkable. […]

18 November    We are conscious of sound through our ears, thanks to the air, light through our eyes thanks to the ether (so they say). We are conscious of heat through our body – through our blood. We are conscious of movement and force only through our mill.

2 December    I’m reading physics. A column of air exerts pressure. Point number one. But a liquid has the property of exerting pressure from all sides. Point number two. I didn’t understand it as a child, and I thought I was stupid. Now I still don’t understand it, but I see that others are stupid. That’s faith. If you accept the incarnation and then the turning of wine into blood, there’s no end to the confusion.

So what does it mean? Air exerts a force on a vacuum enclosed in a hard casing. That’s all. If I want to stop a horse and it knocks me out of the way I say simply: I have encountered a force and I can see what that force is. If I row down a river and hold an oar, something exerts a pressure, and I say – it’s a force. Whose? Mine, holding the oar. If the air exerts a pressure I say – it’s a force holding the air. But what is air? A force. What is it trying to do, how does it work? As far as I know it is trying to flow over the earth evenly under the influence of gravity: i.e. there is a combination of two forces – its own, that of the air, and gravity. And what is the horse? A combination of two forces – its own, that of the horse, and gravity. Both the horse and the air are unthinkable without these two concepts: (1) horse and air, and (2) gravity.

28 December    If a man thinks that his life is only a transient phenomenon – the sound of Plato’s lyre2 – it’s because the lives of all other people seem to him to be merely the sound of a lyre; but if he loves or is loved, his own life takes on a deeper meaning for him.

Notes

1 Tolstoy had been reading Jules Verne’s De la terre à la lune to his children.

2 In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo the body is compared to a well-tuned lyre and the soul to the harmony it produces. When the lyre is broken the harmony is destroyed.

1874

27 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Novum organum together with a translation.1

There is a language of philosophy, but I won’t use it. I will use ordinary language. Interest in philosophy is common to all people and all people are judges of it.

Philosophical language was invented to counter objections. I’m not afraid of objections. I am a seeker. I don’t belong to any camp. And I ask my readers not to. This is the first prerequisite for philosophy. I must object to the materialists in my foreword. They say that there is nothing except life on earth. I must object, because if that were so, there would be nothing for me to write about. Having lived for close on fifty years, I am convinced that life on earth has nothing to give, and that the clever man who looks at life on earth seriously, its labours, fears, reproaches, struggles – what for? for madness sake? – such a man would shoot himself at once, and Hartmann and Schopenhauer are right. But Schopenhauer gave people to feel that there is something, which stopped him from shooting himself. What that something is is the purpose of my book.2 What do we live by? Religion.

Notes

1 An entry on a separate sheet of paper, referring to Francis Bacon’s Novum organum and a Russian translation of it which Strakhov had sent to Tolstoy.

2 As early as 1874, soon after Anna Karenina had been begun, Tolstoy appears to have been contemplating writing a book about religion.

1878

17 April, Yasnaya Polyana    After thirteen years1 I want to continue my diary. Went to matins yesterday (Easter). In the morning, read Venevitinov’s notes.2 Went for a walk with Vasily Ivanovich. We talked about his case.3 In the evening we all went shooting with the children to the Zakaz wood. Read Bolotov.4 Bocharov’s diary.5 I think everything is clear for the beginning. Got up at 10 today, read and began to write – but had a cold and felt mentally and physically weak. Went out for a walk, but it was cold and I came back. Sonya talked to Lizaveta Alexandrovna6 and is glad to have been of use to her. They are rolling Easter eggs. I’ll write some letters.

5 May    Yesterday I didn’t help an old lady from Telyatino. Gossiped with Vasily Ivanovich. Boasted about an idea of mine and quarrelled with Sonya. Was angry today with Alexey7 and the headman for digging round the apple trees badly. In the morning, read Fonvizina’s8 memoirs. Devotion to God is right and dangerous.

22 May    Had some important and painful thoughts and feelings as a result of a conversation with Vasily Ivanovich about Seryozha.9 [3 words deleted] All the loathsome things of my youth made my heart burn with horror and the pain of remorse. I suffered agonies for a long time. Went to Tula with Seryozha and had a talk with him. Have started to get up early and am trying to write, but without success. Without success, the more so because I’m not well. But I think my head is full to the brim, and full of good things. Finished Bolotov. Read Parfeny.10 The Schism suggests to me more and more the importance of the idea that a sign of the truthfulness of the Church is its unity (its all-embracing unity), but that this unity cannot be achieved by me, or A or B, converting everybody else to our own views about faith (this is what has happened up to now, and all schisms, papism, Lutheranism, etc. are the fruit of this), but only by everybody who encounters dissenters discarding from within himself all the causes of disagreement, and trying to find in other people the basic things on which they are agreed. The cross with eight ends or with four, the transubstantiation of the wine or the act of remembrance – isn’t it really all one and the same?

Went to mass on Sunday. I can find an explanation which satisfies me for everything in the church service. But prayers for a long life and the subjugation of one’s enemies is blasphemy. A Christian should pray for his enemies, not against them.

Read the Gospels. Christ says everywhere that everything temporal is false, and that only the abstract is real. ‘The birds of the air’, etc. The children: Ilya and Tanya have been telling secrets: they are in love. How terrible, nasty and sweet they are.

Started to write ‘my life’.11

1 June    Summer guests: Mashenka, Varenka, Tanya, the Sverbeyevs, Islenyev, Islavin, Bobrinsky, Urusov – they are all swarming about and upsetting me. Apart from that, Andryusha12 is ill. I’m building a hut in the Chepyzh wood. All this time I haven’t touched a pen. True, I’ve written some letters. I’m reading Parfeny.

3 June    Bobrinsky was here.13 He tormented me with his talk about religion and the Word. He has a passion for talking! His self-deception is astonishing. For me he was important, in that the delusion of basing faith on the word and the word alone was terribly obviously apparent in him. Yesterday I wrote quite a lot in my little book – I don’t know why – about faith.

Notes

1 The last entry in the diary proper was 10 April 1865.

2 On the history of the Decembrist movement. Tolstoy was working at the time on his novel The Decembrists.

3 V. I. Alexeyev, a teacher in the Tolstoy household, who wished to settle on some land Tolstoy had bought in the Samara province.

4 The Life and Adventures of Andrey Bolotov, an agronomist, writer and translator of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. His memoirs were published in four volumes in 1871-3.

5 A diary kept by a Yasnaya Polyana peasant, Alexey Bocharov, and used by Tolstoy in connection with the new novel he was planning to write.

6 V. I. Alexeyev’s wife.

7 A. S. Orekhov, a former valet of Tolstoy’s and now an estate manager at Yasnaya Polyana.

8 The wife of the Decembrist who accompanied him into exile.

9 Tolstoy’s eldest son.

10 The abbot of a monastery, who wrote about the Old Believers. The reference is to his book The Story of the Pilgrimage through Russia, Moldavia, Turkey and the Holy Land of the monk Parfeny of Mt Athos, 1855.

11 Some unfinished autobiographical reminiscences of his childhood.

12 Tolstoy’s son.

13 A disciple of the English evangelist Lord Radstock.

1881

17 April, Yasnaya Polyana1    A talk with Seryozha about non-resistance to evil. […]

19 April    People from Baburino came – begging. I had no money; refused them.

Two pilgrims – soldiers.

All hopeless cases – soldiers or cripples.

A peasant from Shchyokino – hard, shy, frank, small of stature. He asked for money – I refused. A peasant from Baburino with a boy. The peasant had been sharpening an elm stake when drunk, and slashed his nose. He was in hospital for twenty-two days and they charged him five roubles fifty copecks. He couldn’t pay. ‘Off to the police-station then.’ Off he went. They took him into a room and locked him in. ‘When you bring the money we’ll let you out.’ He left them some grain. Nikita from Salamasovo asked for money simply because he was poor; I gave him three roubles.

25 April    Talked yesterday with Seryozha and Urusov. Today, a beggar woman from Kaznacheyevka, drunk. A widow from Grumant. Her boy would do the ploughing. She asked for a horse. I didn’t give her one.

A crippled old man from Golovenki, a caftan rolled up across his shoulder. Seven roubles for a horse. He wept. Don’t wrong people, remember God. I saw through him. Lord have mercy.

Konstantin sent a note with a young girl. He was terribly exhuasted, had been ploughing, and hadn’t a crust of bread. The children gave him something. Three women pilgrims.

27 April    A young man from Vologda, a sick man, with icons and communion bread. He offered them for sale.

A soldier from Tver province, from Novotorzhok; he’d heard about Shevelino that the people there were kind. An old woman in rags from Odoyev. An old woman from Myasoyedovo.

Yesterday Masha2 gave twenty copecks herself, nobody saw her. A victim of a fire came when I was out – his wife had been burnt to death. An old woman from Kolpyonka. I reproached her – her son had eight children, and there was no bread in the house. She wept. […]

6 May    An old man from Rudakovo. Laughing eyes and a kind, toothless mouth. We spoke about wealth. Not for nothing does the proverb say – money is hell. The Saviour was out walking with two disciples. ‘Go along the road and you’ll come to a cross-roads; don’t go left – that way is hell.’ – ‘Let’s see what hell is like,’ they thought. So they went. There was a heap of gold lying there. ‘You see, he said hell, but we’ve found treasure.’3 They couldn’t carry it themselves. They went off to fetch a cart. They went separate ways and thought – ‘It will have to be shared’. One sharpened his knife, the other baked a poisoned bun. They came back, and the one thrust his knife into the other and killed him. The bun dropped out of his pocket and he ate it. Both of them perished. […]

12 May    […] Went to Tula. Sixteen Kaluga peasants have been over a month in prison for having no documents. They should have been sent to Kaluga and back to their homes. They’ve already been detained for more than a month on the pretext that the Kaluga jail is overcrowded. […]

15 May    Yesterday Sukhotin and Svechin came.4 Sukhotin has dried up. Svechin is still alive. We went to Tula.5 Shatilov tried to argue that the peasants, the judge and everybody were all in the wrong. At the emancipation he had wrested 1,200 desyatins from the peasants. He leased it back to them at four roubles each on condition they made redemption payments on a household basis – and now, after twenty years, he’d taken umbrage and given the land to some other people. During the night they had ploughed it up. An explosion in Tula; soldiers walking about playing with cartridges; children. The prison. One man enjoying himself ploughing. The warder on his home territory; a party of convicts being assembled. Shaven-headed men in irons.

A man from Vorobyovka, the husband of a dissolute wife. An old man of sixty-seven, embittered, in ‘for arson’, sick and barely alive. A lame boy. 114 people in for having no documents. ‘They even exile you for being badly dressed.’ Some have got three months. Some are corrupt, some are nice, simple people. A weak old man came out of the hospital. An enormous louse on his cheek. People are being exiled by the village communes. Two are being exiled without being tried for any offence. One – as a result of a petition by his wife – for property worth 1,500 roubles. As a boy he had been in a mental home, deformed, and prone to fits. He fell down in front of us and began to beat himself. A tall soldier in his sixth year inside. His trial lasted a year, he was sentenced to eighteen months with an extra fifteen months for passing himself off as a craftsman. The commune wouldn’t have him, and since then he’s been waiting for two years to join a ‘party’. Two were doing hard labour for fighting – not murder. ‘We’re done for, for nothing at all,’ wailed one of them. He had a kind face.

The stench was terrible.

On the way back there was a toothless old woman. She had a copeck and so had I. I said: ‘I’ve got one too.’ She said: ‘You ought to have a lot. But we’re used to poverty.’

In the evening Pisarev and Samarin came. Samarin6 said with a smile: ‘They ought to be hanged.’ I wanted to say nothing and ignore him; I wanted to throw him out on his neck. But I said my say. The state. ‘It’s all the same to me what toys you play with, as long as no harm comes from the game.’ […]

18 May    […] Evening at Vasily Ivanovich’s.7 Malikov and Sokolov.8 A talk with Sokolov. He would like the kingdom of heaven on earth. A passionate, honest lad. In the morning Seryozha made me lose my temper, and Sonya attacked me cruelly and incomprehensibly. Seryozha said: ‘Christ’s teaching is well known, but it’s too difficult.’ I said: ‘You wouldn’t say “it’s too difficult” to run out of a blazing room through the only door.’ ‘It’s too difficult.’

In the evening I said that Malikov was doing more for the government than a whole district of gendarmes. Foaming at the mouth they began to abuse Malikov – in a despicable manner; I said nothing more. Then they began to talk. Hanging is necessary, flogging is necessary, even hitting the weak in the teeth with no witnesses present is necessary, to prevent the people from rioting – that would be terrible. But hitting Jews – that’s not a bad thing. Then, without rhyme or reason, they talked about fornication – and with relish.

Somebody is mad – either they are or I am. […]

29 May    […] A talk with Fet and my wife. The Christian teaching is impracticable. So it’s stupid? No, but it’s impracticable. But have you tried to practise it? No, but its impracticable. […]

31 May    […] A talk with Tanya about Vasily Ivanovich. The worldly don’t understand the otherwordly. The morality of Liza’s future life and the immorality of Tanya’s life.9

25 June    Ten pilgrims. An old man of sixty-eight, blind, with an old woman. Tall, slim and alive. Like a blind Bolkhin. He complained about the peasants – they’d taken his land, his house (in order to bury him) and his share of a wood that was sold. Stories about the Ukrainians. ‘From one village to another is usually forty, thirty or twenty versts. People shout across the street. “Come in here for the night.” They give you food and drink and a bed. And something for the journey. But there’s no one to sell our scraps to. They were collected for us by the blind, but were thrown away into a hemp field. Our poverty is terrible. No one has anything to give. I don’t sell anything – I give it to feed the orphans – I’m not saying that to boast.’ – ‘It’s a shame to give it away for nothing. Try and sell it.’ – ‘I can’t sell anything; we had nothing to eat yesterday and it’s nearly suppertime today.’ He wept. ‘Give me the weighing machine!’ He wouldn’t take any money. A story about a Ukrainian. ‘He knew I couldn’t see, and took off my icon of Panteleimon.’ He knelt down and wept. ‘Kiss me on the eyes.’10

Two people from Siberia. One was a locksmith, who’d stolen something. He was going to dig up the money. The other had stuck it out with a merchant for sixteen years for 100 roubles a year.

Kuzminsky is surprised that people don’t approve of Muravyov.11 ‘He was acting from conviction.’ He’s a highway robber from conviction.

26, 27 June    A great many poor people. I’m rather unwell. Haven’t slept and haven’t eaten anything solid for six days. Tried to feel happy. It’s difficult, but possible. I’m aware of some progress towards it.

28 June    A talk with Seryozha, a continuation of yesterday’s talk about God. He and the others think that to say ‘I’ve no knowledge of this, it can’t be proved, I don’t need it’ is a sign of intelligence and education; whereas it’s really a sign of ignorance. ‘I’ve no knowledge of any planets, nor the axis on which the earth rotates, nor any incomprehensible ecliptics, and I don’t want to take it all on trust, but I can see that the sun moves and the stars move somehow.’ Of course it’s very difficult to prove the rotation of the earth and its path, and the mutations and the precessions of equinoxes, and there is much that is unclear and above all difficult to imagine, but the advantage is that everything is reduced to a unity. Similarly in the spiritual and moral fields – we must reduce to a unity the questions what to do, what to know, what to hope for. All mankind is struggling to reduce them to a unity. And suddenly to disunite everything reduced to a unity appears to people to be a service which they boast about. Who is to blame? We teach them church rituals and scripture assiduously, knowing in advance that it won’t outlast maturity, and we teach them a multitude of sciences, unconnected with each other. And they are all left without any unity, with various uncoordinated sciences, and they think this is a gain.

Seryozha admitted that he loved the life of the flesh, and believed in it. I’m glad that the question has been clearly put.

Went to Konstantin’s.12 He’s been ill for a week, a pain in the side and a cough. Now he’s got jaundice. Kurnosenkov had jaundice. Kondraty died of jaundice. The poor people are dying of jaundice! Dying ‘of boredom’.

His wife has mastitis, there are three little girls and no bread. It was getting on for 4, and they still hadn’t eaten. The girls went to pick some berries and ate them. The stove is lit so that the place shouldn’t seem uninhabited, and the baby shouldn’t get hiccups. Konstantin brought in the last sheep.

Back at home a sick, cross-eyed peasant from Gorodni was waiting for me. A neighbour had brought him. He was standing waiting in our drive.

We had an enormous dinner, with champagne. The Tanyas13 were dressed up. All the children had belts costing five roubles. After dinner a cart was already on its way to a picnic, surrounded by peasants’ carts bringing people back exhausted from work. […]

29 June    A gentle, well-to-do old man; first he wept, then he asked permission to build. He’s prepared in advance to pay a fine to the justice of the peace. Pilgrims. A beggar woman from Gorodni came on to the balcony and lay down at my feet in the middle of the doorway.

A talk with Yuryev.14 He doesn’t like the fact that they want to give land to the peasants, yet he’s a liberal in everything.

3 July    I can’t get over my illness. Weakness, laziness and grief. Activity is necessary, its aim – enlightenment, improvement and union with others. Enlightenment I can assign to other people. Improvement – to myself. Union must be with those who are enlightened, and those who are trying to improve themselves. […]

6 July    […] A talk with Kuzminsky, Vasily Ivanovich and Ivan Mikhaylovich.15 Economic revolution isn’t a possibility. But it’s bound to come. It’s surprising that it hasn’t come yet. […]

9, 10 July, Spasskoye-Lutovinovo    At Turgenev’s. Dear Polonsky,16 quietly occupied with his painting and writing and condemning no one, is – poor man – untroubled. Turgenev fears the name of God, but recognises Him. But he’s also naively untroubled, living a life of luxury and idleness. […]

11 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Arrived home: a white-haird nobleman, in a coat with no buttons.

Two soldiers’ wives from Demenka. One cheerfully asked for bread and brushwood for five children.

Sonya had a fit. I took it better, but still badly. I must understand that she’s ill and pity her, but it’s impossible not to try to turn one’s back on evil.

A talk with Tanya17 about education occupied me until morning. They aren’t human beings. […]

13 July,    en route to the Samara estate. We’ve set off.18 Felt sorry for Sonya. Mitasha.19 They prosecuted him for being kind and vain. He sat with us quite happily in the third class, then went into the royal carriages to see Nikolay Nikolayevich20 the younger.

Excitement at all the stations and among the people – the little Tsar is travelling. Shouts of hurrah. […]

15 July    The road to Orenburg. A soldier travelling with his artel to make bricks. Fifty-seven years old. Supporting himself and his wife. ‘I’ll go on till I’m sixty then I’ll get assistance. We’ll support ourselves somehow.’ Came from the Kherson district. He’d walked seventy versts to the steamer, then travelled to Samara. The old people were urging them to go on foot to save the travel money. An argument about thirty-eight copecks. […] The farm near Samara. We’ve reached home.

16 July    Went a walk and drove round to see the horses.

Intolerable anxiety. Idleness. Shame.

22 July    […] Molokans. I read them something of mine.21 They listened intently. The interpretation of the 6th chapter is excellent. The miracle of the Canaanite, the woman possessed of the devil, the woman taken in adultery. With His truth he healed them. […]

13 August    en route for Yasnaya Polyana. Set off home. […]

16 August    At Ryazhk. A man killed by an engine. There’s one every month. To the devil with all engines, as long as men are safe.[…]

17 August    Yasnaya Polyana. Home. An engineer saluted me in the third class. […] Corrected a liberal story about the Tsar’s arrival in Moscow.22 The Mengdens. The house is full. A bad return for one’s money. One shudders for Tanya.

22 August    Turgenev, Samarin. Samarin moved me. Antipathy – bad upbringing. Turgenev – cancan.23 Sad. […]

2 September    Returned from Pirogovo. I often wish to die. Work doesn’t absorb me.

5 October, Moscow    A month has passed – the most agonising of my life. The move to Moscow.24 They are still settling down. When will they start to live? It’s not in order to live, but to do as other people do. Unhappy people! They have no life.

Stench, stones, luxury, poverty. Dissipation. A collection of robbers who have plundered the people and conscripted soldiers and judges to guard their orgies while they feast. All the people have to do is to take advantage of these people’s passions and filch back from them what they have plundered. The men are cleverer at it. The women sit at home; the men scrub floors and bodies in the baths, and work as cabbies.25

Nikolay Fyodorych is a saint.26 A tiny room. He’ll do it! That goes without saying. He doesn’t want payment. No linen, and no bed.

Poor Solovyov,27 he’s condemned Christianity without understanding it, and wants to invent something better. Chatter, endless chatter.

Went to see Syutayev at Torzhok;28 a real comfort.

1881.29 Live at Yasnaya. Give the income from Samara30 to the poor people and the schools in Samara, under the control and supervision of the people paying. The same with the income from Nikolskoye31 (after transferring the land to the peasants). Keep for the time being the income from Yasnaya Polyana, from 2,000 to 3,000, for myself, that is my wife and me and the young children. (Keep it for a time, but with the sole desire to give it up entirely to others, and to be self-sufficient, i.e. to restrict my needs as much as possible and to give more than I take – to direct all my strength to this end and to see in it the purpose and joy of life.) Offer the three grown-up children the choice: either to take from the poor their own share of the Samara or Nikolskoye monies for themselves, or to live there and help to see that the money is used for good purposes, or to live with us and help us. Bring up the young ones to be accustomed to demand less from life. Teach them what they are keen to learn, only not just sciences, but sciences and work. Keep only as many servants as are necessary to help us to change things and to instruct us, and then only for a time while we train ourselves to do without them. Live all together: the men in one room, the women and girls in another. One room to be a library for intellectual pursuits, and one a work room for general use. And since we are so spoiled, a separate room also for the sick. Apart from feeding ourselves and the children and teaching them, there will be work, the estate, and helping with the corn, medical treatment and instruction. On Sundays, dinners for the poor and destitute, reading and talks. Living, food and clothing all the very simplest. Sell or give away everything superfluous – the piano, furniture, carriages. Only study those sciences and arts which can be shared with everyone. Treat all people alike, from governors to beggars. The one aim is happiness – one’s own and that of one’s family – in the knowledge that this happiness consists in being content with little and doing good to others.

Notes

1 I have omitted many entries for 1881, which mainly concern visits from beggars and suppliants, and have only included two or three as examples.

2 Tolstoy’s daughter.

3 A play on the words ad (‘hell’) and sklad (‘treasure’).

4 A. M. Sukhotin – an old friend of Tolstoy’s who had taken part in the defence of Sevastopol; F. A. Svechin – a minor author and for many years Marshal of the Nobility of the Tula province.

5 Tolstoy made two visits to the local prison to familiarise himself with conditions there. It is not clear where he met Shatilov, a local landowner and president of the Moscow Agricultural Society.

6 P. F. Samarin was an old friend of Tolstoy’s, but relations between them had recently deteriorated and Tolstoy strongly disapproved of Samarin’s view that those responsible for the assassination of Alexander II should be hanged in the interests of the state. Samarin is believed to have been the model for Sakhatov in The Fruits of Enlightenment.

7 Alexeyev’s. See 1878, Note 3.

8 Sokolov, a doctor, had been arrested in 1870 in connection with the recent Nechayev terrorist conspiracy; Malikov had been briefly imprisoned after the Populist ‘Trial of the 193’. Both men had socialist leanings.

9 Liza, the daughter of Malikov, whose hard-working life is favourably contrasted with Tolstoy’s own daughter Tatyana’s life of ease.

10 The passage is somewhat obscure, and I have inserted quotation marks where the sense seems to require them.

11 The public prosecutor in the trial of the assassins of Alexander II.

12 K. N. Zyabrev, a former pupil at Tolstoy’s school and one of the poorest peasants in the village.

13 Tolstoy’s daughter and sister-in-law.

14 S. A. Yuryev, at the time editor of the liberal journal Russian Thought.

15 A. M. Kuzminsky, V. I. Alexeyev and I. M. Ivakin (Tolstoy’s elder children’s tutor) respectively.

16 Y. P. Polonsky, a minor poet whom Tolstoy first met in 1855 and who later reacted strongly against Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical views.

17 Tatyana Kuzminskaya.

18 Tolstoy was accompanied by his eldest son on his journey to the estate he had bought in the Samara province.

19 Tolstoy’s old friend D. D. Obolensky, who had been tried for embezzling government funds.

20 The first cousin once removed of Nicholas II.

21 Extracts from his Short Exposition of the Gospels.

22 It is not known which story is meant.

23 Turgenev, on his last visit to Yasnaya Polyana, demonstrated to the Tolstoys how the cancan was danced in Paris.

24 On 15 September the Tolstoys moved to Moscow and stayed temporarily in No. 3 Denezhny Lane (the present Maly Lyovshinsky Lane).

25 Tolstoy’s denunciation of Moscow life soon found expression in his book What Then Must We Do?

26 The ascetic philosopher and librarian at the Rumyantsev Library (Letters, II, 353–4).

27 The religious philosopher V. S. Solovyov, author of The Crisis of Western Philosophy and Faith, Reason and Experience, angered Tolstoy by his criticism of official Christianity.

28 A sectarian peasant, Christian anarchist and critic of the Orthodox Church, for whom Tolstoy had a very high regard (Letters, II, 354, fn.4).

29 A separate, undated entry, originally assigned to 1884, but now believed to have been written in 1881, when Tolstoy was already thinking of disposing of most of his property.

30 Tolstoy’s estate in the Samara province.

31 The estate at Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye in the Tula province.

1882

22 December1    In Moscow again.2 Suffered terrible mental agonies again. For more than a month. But they weren’t fruitless.

If you love God, and love the good (I think I’m beginning to love it) – i.e. live by it, see happiness and life in it – then you also see that the body is an impediment to the true good; not to the good itself, but to the possibility of seeing it and its fruits. Once you look to the fruits of the good you cease to do it, and moreover, by looking to the fruits, you ruin the good, you become vain, you grow despondent. What you do will only be true good when you are not here to ruin it. But you must lay up in advance as big a store of it as possible. Sow, sow in the knowledge that you, the man, will not reap. One man sows, another reaps. You, Lev Nikolayevich, the man, will not reap. If you start, not only to reap but to weed, you will ruin the wheat. Sow, sow. And if you sow God’s seed there can be no doubt that it will grow. It’s now clear that what previously seemed cruel to me – the fact that it won’t be granted to me to see the fruits – is not only not cruel, but good and sensible. How could I have recognised the true good – God’s – from the untrue, if I, a man of the flesh, had been able to enjoy its fruits?

But now it’s clear: what you do without seeing the reward for it, and do lovingly, is surely God’s doing. Sow and sow, God will make it grow; it is not you, the man, who will reap, but what it is within you which sows.

Notes

1 The only diary entry for 1882. It mainly refers to his treatise What I Believe.

2 In July Tolstoy bought a house in Dolgo-Khamovnichesky Lane (the present No. 21, Lev Tolstoy Street) and the family moved there in October. It was to remain their permanent town residence for the rest of his life.

1883

1 January, Moscow1    As soon as I wake up, I often have thoughts and clear ideas about what was previously confused, so that I rejoice and feel that progress has been made.

So it was recently with property. I never could get clear in my own mind what it was. Property as it now is is evil. But property in itself – and the joy at what I have managed to do with it – is good. I see this clearly now. I hadn’t a spoon, but I had a log of wood – I thought about it, worked hard and carved out a spoon. What doubt can there be that it is mine? Just as this bird’s nest is its own nest. It wants to make use of it as it wishes. But property protected by force, by a policeman with a pistol – that is evil. Make a spoon and eat with it, but only as long as nobody else needs it. That’s clear. The question becomes difficult if I make a stick for a lame man, and a drunkard takes the stick to break the door down with. Ask the drunkard to give up the stick. That’s the first thing. The more people there are who ask, the more certain it is that the stick will end up with the person who needs it most.

Today Gudovich died. Died for good – and I and all of us died for a year, a day, or an hour. We live, that means we die. To live well means to die well. A new year! I wish that I and everybody else may die well.

Notes

1 The only diary entry for 1883.

1884

March, Moscow    A peasant went out of his house one evening and saw a light flare up under the eaves. He gave a shout. A man ran away from under the eaves. The peasant recognised his neighbour and enemy, and ran after him. As he did so the roof caught fire, and the house and village burned down.1 […]

I’ve just read a short textbook on mediaeval and modern history.

Is there any more terrible reading in the world? Is there any book which could be more harmful for the young to read? And this is what they study. I read it and it took me a long time to get over my depression. Murder, torture, deceit, robbery, adultery, and nothing more.

They say it’s necessary for a man to know where he came from. But did any of us come from that source? The place where I and every one of us came from, with our own outlook on the world, doesn’t exist in this sort of history. And there is no need to teach it to me.

Just as I carry within me all the physical features of all my ancestors, so I carry within me all the mental activity (the real history) of all my ancestors. I and every one of us are always aware of it. It is all within me – through gas, the telegraph, the newspaper, matches, conversation, and the sight of towns and villages. Can one be made aware of this knowledge? Yes, but for that one neeeds a history of thought – quite independent of that other sort of history. That other history is a crude reflection of real history. The Reformation is a crude, casual reflection of the mental activity which rescued mankind from darkness. Luther, with all his wars and St Bartholomew’s Nights, has no place among men like Erasmus, Boethius, Rousseau, etc. […]

6 March, Moscow    I’ve been translating Lao-Tzu.2 The result is not what I expected. Ozmidov3 came. He lives in the country with his family, poor but cheerful. I organised a collection in the village for a poor paralysed man and his family. […]

7 March    Read about Confucius. Got up very late. Rode on horseback to Aminyevo and back. Everyone is working; only I am idle. […]

8 March    Got up at 9, tidied my room cheerfully with the young children. I’m ashamed to do what has to be done – empty the chamber pot. […]

9 March    Slept till 12. Gurevich4 came, an emigré and a Jew. He wants to find the common factor uniting Jews and Russians. It’s been found long ago. […] Read a bit about China and went for a ride round town. Everyone is working except me. Weakness in the evening. The cobbler5 didn’t come; went to the baths and read Lao-Tzu. […]

10 March    Got up early, tidied my room. […] Lao-Tzu says – one ought to be like water. When there are no obstacles it flows; when there’s a dam it stops. The dam breaks – it begins to flow again; a square vessel – and it’s square; a round vessel – and it’s round. For that reason it’s more important and stronger then anything.

Read Erasmus.6 What a stupid phenomenon Luther’s reformation was. A triumph of narrow-mindedness and folly. Salvation from original sin through faith and the vanity of good works are just as bad as all the superstitions of Catholicism. The teaching about the relations of Church and state (terrible in its absurdity) could only have been the result of folly. It was indeed the result of Lutheranism.

Went to order some boot lasts. Everybody was working, the boy as well. I remarked on it. The proprietor said: ‘It’s impossible to exist without work.’ […]

11 March    Got up early. Tidied my room. The children ran to help of their own accord. Read Erasmus and finished it. […] Confucius’ teaching about the mean is wonderful.7 Just the same as with Lao-Tzu: the fulfilment of the law of nature – that is wisdom, that is strength, that is life. […]

15 March    Woke up at 8, wanted to go to sleep again and slept till 11. Golokhvastov’s book against Engelhardt.8 Some things are good, but how terrible the polemical bitterness is. It’s a lesson for me, and I’m disgusted by the bitterness of my last book.9 One should write intelligibly and briefly as well. My good moral condition I ascribe also to reading Confucius, and especialy Lao-Tzu. I must compile a cycle of reading10 for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, the Gospels. That is something everybody could do with too.

16 March    Got up late. […] After dinner I went round to the cobbler’s. How bright and morally refined it is in his dirty, dark corner. He works with a boy, and his wife feeds the baby. Went to my brother Seryozha’s. Didn’t let Kostenka finish speaking, and annoyed him. (1).11 Walked home with Tanya in silence. The silence depressed me. How remote she is from me. Yet I’m still not able to talk. Yes, and at dinner Seryozha began talking rudely and angrily, and I spoke to him ironically. (2). In the evening I began stitching boots, the cobbler came, and then Malikov and Orfano.12 I could have been better. I should have kept silent. How simple and how difficult it is. My brother Seryozha came. We had a good talk. A fine letter from Chertkov.13 Yes, in conversation with Orfano I said: ‘You don’t know my God, but I know yours’, which offended him. (3).

17 March    Tidying my room is becoming an agreeable habit. Alexander Petrovich14 came. I was very glad and felt fine. He said he had suffered great need at the most difficult time of winter, but what does it matter? He is cheerful and healthy and has got to know good people by living among them; he has got to know the most important thing, namely that there is good in people. Read Ahasver.15  Poor. Poetic embroidery on a good idea, but not a new one. Went for a ride. Was in a very bad mood at dinner, but restrained myself. Began stitching, undid it all, and Orlov came. His story about the death of Ishutin and Uspensky.16 Ishutin was sentenced to death. They put the sack and the noose round him, and then he came to (he said) in the arms of Christ. Christ took the noose off him and took him to Himself. He spent twenty years in penal servitude (giving everything away to others) and lived the whole time with Christ until he died. As he was dying he said, ‘I’ll change my clothes now.’

We talked further about holy fools and he called Lao-Tzu the holy fool’s philosophy. He stayed the night. How happy I was to make his bed for him. My brother Seryozha came. I could have been nicer to him. (1). Downstairs in the morning I apparently picked a quarrel with my wife and Tanya over their bad life. (2). Boasted to myself for having provided a chamber pot for Orlov. Wrote a letter to Chertkov.

18 March    […] A Jew came with a letter. I read the letter. It’s strange. He’s the third Jew to approach me. They all have one thing in common. They feel that their faith, however mutilated, is faith, and better than the unbelief of progress. This one seems the most serious of all. But they all have a sort of burning fervour. They flare up, but don’t stay alight. […]

19 March    Got up late. Read Confucius and made notes. The religious explanation of power is a rational one, and the Chinese teaching about it has been a revelation to me. If God wills, I shall be useful to people by carrying it out. What used to be unclear to me about it is becoming more and more clear. Power need not be oppression when it is recognised as supreme, morally and rationally. Power as oppression arises only when we recognise as supreme what is not supreme according to the demands of our heart and reason. As soon as a man submits to what he does not fully respect – whether father, tsar, or legislative assembly – then you have oppression. […]

21 March    Read Confucius in Legge’s translation until late. Almost all of it is important and profound. Went out late to buy some canvas, and called in on Fet. A good poem about death.17 Solovyov’s article18 is only a denial of populism. I’m weak. I was wrong not to have borrowed Solovyov’s article. Went to sleep after dinner. Felt very poorly; read an English farce,19 a boring one, 350 pages long. […]

23 March    Morning as usual. Settled down to Urusov’s translation.20 Uneven. Often very bad. I don’t know whether it’s the text or the translation? More likely the text. I must write – i.e. express my thoughts – so that they should be good in all languages. The Gospels, Lao-Tzu and Socrates are like that. The Gospels and Lao-Tzu are better in other languages. Went for a ride on horseback. Riding is boring. Stupid and frivolous. Tried to talk to my wife after dinner. Impossible. That’s the one thing that grieves me. The one thorn, and a painful one. Went to the cobbler’s. One only has to go into a worker’s home and one’s soul blossoms forth. Stitched shoes until 10. Tried again to talk to my wife, and again there was malice – lack of love. […]

26 March    As usual. Talked to the older children at coffee. Not very well. Finished the translation. I’m going to bring the books back. I feel the need for more consistency and freedom from falsehood – yurodstvo21 – yes. In the library Nikolay Fyodorovich22 seemed to want something from me. I feel at ease with him.

Zlatovratsky and Marakuyev came.23 Zlatovratsky expounded the programme of populism. The arrogance and the muddled and lamentable nature of his thought was startling. I expressed my opinion fairly truthfully, but not entirely so. (2).24  Then I simply lied about his works, saying I’d read them. (3). In the evening I came across a girl of fifteen, drunken and dissipated. Didn’t know what to do. (4). Read Krivenko’s Physical Labour.25 Excellent. […]

27 March    Morning as usual. Alexander Petrovich told me about a woman who had died of hunger at their house.26 Yuryev came. I must be more firm in avoiding chatter. (1). Went to the police. They said that prostitutes are often younger than fifteen. Bells ring and guns fire, people are learning to kill, but the sun shines warm and bright again, the streams flow, the earth thaws and God again says: ‘Live happily’. From there I went to Rzhanov’s house27 to the dead woman, was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say. (2). Met Bugayev28 and invited him round. Vanity – I wanted him to understand me. But the result will be idle, half-crazy chatter. (3). Was irritated and tried to foist my despondency on to people not party to it. (4). I must do things myself and not complain. Unwell – fever and toothache. Went to sleep after dinner. The walking corpses, the Shidlovskys,29 came. Must go away. (5). […]

28 March    Didn’t sleep the whole night long, got up before 6. Tidied my room; still, it wasn’t unpleasant. Stitched boots, went to Lopatin’s and to the post. Dozed and read Krivenko. (How Russians love the fundamentals of morality, without compromises.) Also Dumas’ chatter. A letter from Chertkov, and wrote one to him. Fet came to order some boots.30 I listened to him, and stopped my own attempts to make conversation. There was a moment when I felt sorry for him, as a sick man. Would it were so more often. In spite of sleeplessness and toothache I slept like a top. There is so much in my head and heart, but I can hear no definite command from God.

29 March    […] Read Confucius. More profound and better still. Without him and Lao-Tzu the Gospels are not complete. And he is nothing without the Gospels. […]

Two things became clear to me yesterday: one unimportant, the other important. The unimportant one: I was afraid to say and think that all of 99 per cent of people are mad. But not only is there nothing to be afraid of, but one can’t help saying or thinking this. If people act senselessly (living in towns, education, luxury, idleness), they will certainly say senseless things. And so you simply walk about among mad men, trying not to annoy them and to cure them if possible. (2) The important one: If I really live (in part) according to God’s will, then the senseless, sick world cannot applaud me for it. And if they were to applaud me, I would cease to live according to God’s will and start to live according to the will of the world; I would cease to see and look for God’s will. Such has been Thy pleasure. Chertkov distressed me, but not for long.31 (1).

30 March    Went to bed at 11 and got up again early. Walked to the stocking factory.32 The whistles mean that at 5 a boy starts work at his machine and stands there till 8. At 8 he has a drink of tea and works till 12; at 1 he works again till 4. At 4.30 he works again till 8. And so on every day. That’s what the whistles mean which we hear in bed. […]

In the evening I stitched shoes – it was good. I was late – my nieces and Leonid33  came. Joined them for tea. It was so repulsive, pathetic and degrading to listen to them, especially the poor, mentally sick Tanya,34 that I went to bed. Couldn’t sleep for a long time because of grief and doubts and prayed to God as I’d never prayed before. Teach me and save me from this horror. I know that this prayer was only expressing my excited state. Yet strangely, my prayer was heeded.

Thought of writing Notes, Not of a Madman.35 How vividly I experienced it – what will come of it? Mrs Behr sent me her translation – an excellent one.36 Read it. Vanity – told Leonid that the woman’s death had made me sick. (2).37 How surprising that for almost a month I haven’t been angry.

31 March    Couldn’t get to sleep till 2, but got up at 7. Went to a metal-workers’ school. The best institution in Russia. If only there were no interference from government or church. Read Notes of the Fatherland. Chatter by Shchedrin.38 An article about the madness of heroes.39 Inertia is a psychological law. Any innovation is painful. The conclusion is clear. There are two laws: inertia and movement. Madness, i.e. abnormality, is one only of the two – the resultant of the two is normality.

Said some unnecessary things about the teaching of mathematics to the school headmaster. (1). Read the German translation. Very good. Went to Leonid’s. Dyakov and his daughter were there. I’m very sad. A very depressing dinner at home with Kostenka. Went to bed and slept. Stakhovich40 came. Stitched a shoe. Drank tea. Was alone with her.41 We had a talk. I was unfortunate and cruel enough to touch her pride, and it all started. I couldn’t keep silent. It appeared that I’d annoyed her the morning of the day before yesterday when she came in to interrupt me. She is very seriously ill mentally. And the crux of it all is her pregnancy. (2). A very great sin and shame. Read a bit of Confucius and am going to bed late. […]

2 April    Got up late. The room had already been tidied. Talked to Urusov till 4. She is gentler now – morbid and submissive. Went to Wolf’s.42 Had dinner. Seryozha came – at first irritable, then gentle and kind. Stitched boots. We talked quietly over tea and I went to bed at 12.30. It’s bad that I’ve done nothing. She has forgotten about her anger and was glad that I’d forgiven her. That’s better. This senseless life is terribly pathetic.

3 April    Got up at 10. Read Archives of Psychiatry.43 Prayer is a common form of madness. Story of a wealthy pupil of the Corps de Pages. Coitus, dissipation at thirteen. A sweet, tender nature and its fall and ruin.

Ozmidov came. His eyes hurt. He’s a little weaker. I don’t know whether it was a good thing that I told him too frankly about my position. […]

Repin44 at home. Had a very good talk with him over work. […]

4 April    Got up late. Toothache and fever. Can’t do any mental work. Never mind. Read a bit and began stitching. Went to the museum between 2 and 3. Storozhenko45 met me; he remembered about the work. To Kuznetsky Bridge. The police were protecting the customers. From there to Dmitrovka. Repin’s picture wasn’t there. Lay down at home. Toothache and fever. In the evening I worked on the boots till after 1.

It’s very depressing in the family. Depressing, because I can’t sympathise with them. All their joys, the examination, social successes, music, furniture, shopping – I consider them all a misfortune and an evil for them, and I can’t tell them so. I can and I do speak, but my words don’t get through to anyone. They don’t seem to know the meaning of my words, but only that I have a bad habit of speaking that way. In weak moments – now is one of them – I’m surprised at their ruthlessness. They must surely see that for three years now I’ve not merely suffered, but been cut off from life. I’ve been assigned the role of a querulous old man, and in their eyes I can’t escape from it: if I take part in their life I renounce the truth, and they would be the first to cast this renunciation in my teeth. If I look sadly, as now, at their madness – I’m a querulous old man, like all old men.

The following is a scrap of a conversation I had with Olsufyev: if we believe that the aim and duty of a man is the service of his neighbour, then we must go on to consider how to serve one’s neighbour – we must work out rules how we in our position can serve. But for us in our position to serve, it is first of all necessary to stop requiring service from our neighbours. It seems strange, but the first thing we need to do is to serve ourselves first of all. Light the stove, fetch the water, cook the dinner, wash the dishes, etc. In that way we shall begin to serve others.

5 April    Got up late – jaded. The same sadness. Particularly now at the sight of everyone at home. The cleaners are polishing the floor; we made it dirty. I’ve let myself go and am less strict with myself. I’m not noting down my sins. Cheer up. A letter from Chertkov yesterday. Repin said that even Kramskoy had called him mad. Read in Psychiatry about a landowner, Y, who lived with his servants.46 A letter from Mirsky and some poems.47 Astonishing. He’s a Christian. The poems are excellent in content, but their form is that of a thirteen-year-old boy. Strakhov came. He’s grown thin. Still the same narrowness and rigidity. But he could wake up. Went for a walk. Dinner. Nothing all dinner time except shopping and dissatisfaction with those who serve us. Everything is more and more depressing. Their blindness is astonishing. After dinner Ronzhev came – boring. Chertkov. He’s ploughed a firmer and deeper furrow. He eats with the people, but the people are his servants. Then Strakhov came, and then Tanya – revolting. A conversation with Strakhov about it being impossible to follow rules – i.e. there aren’t any rules. A mad and senseless interruption to the conversation, and it’s impossible even to expose this madness.48 If I expose it, there will be anger and accusations of personal malice. If I don’t – the assurance that all is well, and deeper and deeper degradation. I wait for a solution.

7 April    It’s late. A fever. Read Severnaya’s drama.49 Excellent knowledge of the people and their language and a deep penetration of life, but psychologically weak. I’m going to the exhibition. Kramskoy’s picture is excellent.50 Repin’s didn’t come off.51 Had quite a good talk with Tretyakov.52 At home. Strakhov. Went to Dmokhovskaya’s.53 Said what I had to. Crowds running to matins. But when will they start running, if only 100th part of them, to the business of life! I can’t imagine what life would be like then. To make this transformation is the task, the joyful work of a lifetime. It’s terribly difficult – impossible – and yet the only thing possible. A conversation with Strakhov about Darwinism. I was bored and ashamed. He – poor man – was seriously and rationally trying to refute the ravings of madmen. It’s a waste of time and an endless task. A waste of time because they are mad just because they don’t believe rational conclusions, and an endless task because there is no end to madness. […]

9 April    Read Strakhov’s article54 late at night. It’s useless, you can’t possibly demonstrate every single stupidity. And there’s no need to analyse scientific methods; a man who loves science knows them, just as a man who can walk knows the laws of equilibrium. Started Mencius.55 Very good and important. ‘Mencius taught people how to recover,56 how to find the lost heart.’ Delightful.

Very important. Began to reprimand Tanya, and was angry. And there was Misha standing in the big doorway and looking at me questioningly. If only he were always there in front of me! A great fault, the second in a month. Kept hovering round Tanya, wanting to ask her forgiveness, but couldn’t make up my mind. I don’t know whether it was good or bad. Went to Fet’s. Had a splendid talk. I told him all the things I say about him, and we spent the evening amicably. Adam Vasilyevich57 came in the evening. Played vint.58 Stupid. This filthy, idle life is getting a grip on me again.

A letter from Chertkov – splendid.59

10 April    Late. Don’t even remember the morning – it was so unimportant. Yes, in the morning I went to find out an address. Kislinsky to dinner. After dinner I went to Armfeldt’s.60 Felt a terrible weakness on the Petrovka. It’s death, and it’s evil. I’ve just remembered. I wrote a letter to Chertkov, and Tretyakov came. He asked about the meaning of art, about alms and about the freedom of women. It’s difficult for him to understand. Everything about him is narrow, but honest. I asked him about a lot of things, but didn’t argue about the main thing, his faith. It would determine everything. We rolled eggs, and I went to Dmokhovskaya’s to get an address. Had dinner, then to Armfeldt’s. Sat there as though bemused from weakness. At home Anna Mikhaylovna, Strakhov, Kislinsky. Strakhov’s conversation interesting. I understood him. Read about the Armfeldt trial till 4. I understood too that the activity of the revolutionaries was an imaginary, external activity – through pamphlets and proclamations which can’t rouse up anybody to revolt. And a legitimate activity. If nobody interfered with it, there would be no harm in it. But once they put a stop to that activity, the bombs appeared.

11 April    Late. Read Natalya Armfeldt’s correspondence. Of a high order. A light-hearted, honest, cheerful, gifted and kind type of person. You can’t forbid people to express to one another their thoughts about how to organise their lives better. And that’s all our revolutionaries did before the bombs. We’ve become so stupid that such an expression of our thoughts seems to us a crime. In the morning I walked to Strakhov’s. Had a good talk with him and Fet. Solovyov came. I don’t need him, he’s tedious and pitiable. Two brothers-in-law to lunch. Petya is obnoxious, Sasha more tolerable. Went off to Seryozha’s. Again a death-like weakness. At home stitched boots. But went out to have tea and sat at the table and stayed till 2. Shameful and vile. Terrible depression. Full of weakness. I must take care of myself, as though I were asleep, so as not to damage what I need when I’m awake. I’m being more and more dragged into the mire, and my convulsions are of no avail. As long as I’m not dragged in without protest! I haven’t been angry. I’ve little or no vanity either. But these days have been full of weakness, death-like weakness. I long for real death. I don’t despair. But I would like to live, and not stand guard over my life.

14 April    Didn’t sleep all night. Orlov ‘dusted’ the room in my absence, and other people cleaned it out. We played with the children. Orlov said: ‘Surely there must be a happy life?’ Would I wager on it? I don’t know. One must be happy in an unhappy life. One must make this unhappiness one’s aim. And I can do so when I’m strong at heart. One must be strong or else sleep. Alchevsky61 came. Then I went to Wolf’s. The shop-assistant was offended that I didn’t take off my hat. But I’ve got toothache. I didn’t aplogise. (1). Went to Alchevskaya’s. A clever, sensible old woman. But why the velvet and the bird-like appearance? I succumbed unnecessarily to emotion. (2). It’s depressing at home. […]

If only people could stop using force when they fight. It’s ridiculous and pathetic that our revolutionaries (bombs apart) who have been fighting with the legitimate and immortal weapon of the light of truth, should expose themselves to the charge of wanting to fight with sticks. This is something their convictions won’t allow them to do anyway.

15 April    Got up late, tidied my room. With the children. Misha told stories. He’s an artist. Read Alchevskaya’s book.62 Excellent. […] Went to the fair. Dances, games of catch. Pathetic factory people – puny creatures. Teach me, God, how to serve them. I see no other way but to bring light to them without any other considerations. […]

17 April    Got up earlier, wrote a letter to Tolstaya.63 Petitions to royal and holy personages, and dealings with Their Highnesses are no longer possible for me. Fancy asking a holy personage to stop torturing a woman!

At tea she64 seemed to want to say something, but I was afraid of her. And I immediately said the wrong thing. Truly death is now something for me to be glad about. Went to the cathedral65 with Usov. Usov quarrelled with a soldier. Weakness. Paintings beautiful. Philosophers in church with all their pronouncements. At home; Dmokhovskaya came. She brought a pile of material.66 I went for a ride, then read Dmokhovskaya’s manuscripts. Bardina’s poems67 moved me to tears. It’s all becoming clear to me. They were playing at revolution, they believed they were criminals and enemies, they prenaient au mot [took on trust] everything. The organisers of the murders clearly stand out from among them – they are like policemen and hangmen in relation to honest conservatives. […]

18 April    Late. Read through the manuscripts, then my own manuscript on the census.68 I want to publish it in aid of the unfortunate. I used to doubt whether it was necessary to help political prisoners. I didn’t want to, but now I understand that I haven’t the right to refuse. The hand is stretched out towards me. ‘And visit me in prison.’69 […] Dined in peace, had a sleep. Went for a walk. Lvov told me about Blavatskaya,70 the transmigration of souls, the powers of the spirit, the white elephant and the oath of allegiance to the new faith. How can one keep sane when exposed to such impressions? Stitched boots, drank tea and went to Seryozha’s until 2. An unimportant, but amicable and smutty conversation. Got a letter from Chertkov, and replied to his honest confession.71

I’m less strong where frankness is concerned – a sign that I’m less strong morally.

21 April    Late. Found the article (it was in draft). Revised it a bit, and took it to the printer’s.72 I don’t myself believe in the article. Met Samarin. Was cold, but not cold enough. (1). A bad habit – to think too highly of people in hats and carriages. Samarin means less to me than Peter the man-servant. I don’t know Peter the man-servant, but I do know Peter Samarin. It’s the same with Zakharin; I drove with him to the Tverskoy Boulevard. (2). Dinner at home. The terrible thing is that their cheerfulness, especially Tanya’s – a cheerfulness which isn’t the consequence of work (they don’t do any) but of malice – is an unwarrantable cheerfulness, and this hurts me. […]

22 April    Late. Had a good sleep. And seem to have woken up. I’ve slept for over a month. All is clear and firm again. Tried to remember whether I did anything bad when asleep. Not much. Got down to the article. Revised it a bit, but got no further than the description of the house. I must jump ahead to the conclusion. I still don’t believe in this work. But it might seem good to others. The cheerfulness of the children is pathetic. I’m going for a walk, aimlessly. I’m drawn towards Rzhanov’s house. […]

23 April    Very late. Tidied my room briskly. Read the paper. Then settled down to work – no good. Went to the Urusovs’. His niece is an intelligent conservative. Surely one must oppose evil? They’re all the same. People want to know the truth and condemn others, but they don’t want to do it. Dinner at home. It’s absolutely impossible to talk to my family. They don’t listen. They’re not interested. They know everything. A book by an Arab from Sukhotin. Read it with a great effort. Copied out a few things – against the Trinity. Went to Dmokhovskaya’s, the last-maker’s and Sukhotin’s. Three in a bed at the last-maker’s. How remote we are from them. A telegram from Chertkov – his father has died. Stitched boots all evening. The Dmokhovskys definitely want to make a revolutionary out of me. […]

24 April    […] Why can’t I talk to the children; to Tanya? Seryozha is impossibly obtuse. The same castrated mind that his mother has. If you two should ever read this, forgive me; it hurts me terribly.

26 April    […]At home I read the holy Sermon on the Mount and tried to write an introduction to it.73 Impossible. Set off for the book shop, but didn’t get there. Nobody on the tramcar could change ten roubles. They all thought I was a swindler. […]

27 April    Earlier. Tried to continue the article. Can’t get on with it. It must be false. I want to start and finish something new. Either the death of the judge,74 or Notes, Not of a Madman. […]

30 April    In the morning a young lady from the Gays brought me a letter from the young Nikolay to his brother.75 A wonderful letter. A great happiness for me. Tried to write – couldn’t get on. Took up The Death of Ivan Ilich – it’s good; I’m better at that. […]

1 May    Earlier. Began to revise Ivan Ilich and worked well. Probably I need a rest from the other work, and that’s what this work of fiction is. […] I’m trying to give up smoking.

3 May    Was expecting a letter from Pamyatka,76 and found one from my wife. Poor woman, how she hates me. Lord, help me. If this is my cross, so be it; let it weigh me down and crush me. But this harassment of my soul is terrible, not just depressing and painful to endure. […] Went to Usov’s.77 A good conversation about town and country. One can talk about the advantages of the town as advantages, but as soon as one asks the question which is more moral, that’s the end of it.

I’m depressed. I’m a worthless, pathetic, unnecessary creature, and moreover a self-centred one. The one good thing is that I want to die. […]

4 May    Got down to work. Once again I kept jumping from one article to another, and gave it up. Went to see Davydov and Zakharin.78 Davydov’s job as public prosecutor is intolerable – it revolts me. I can see that these compromises are the root of all evil. I didn’t tell him so. (1). He recounted incredibly disgusting and stupid things about their work and their relations with the governor. Got back late. Ate a lot, (2), and smoked. (3). Stitched boots in the evening. Pisarenko and Lopatin came.79 The older children were rude and I was hurt. Ilya is all right. He’s spoiled by school and life, but he still has a spark of life intact in him. There’s nothing at all in Sergey. All his emptiness and obtuseness are guaranteed for all time by his impregnable self-satisfaction. […]

5 May    Dreamed that my wife loved me. How simple and clear everything became! Nothing like that in real life. And it’s that which is ruining my life. I’m not even trying to write. It would be good to die. […]

6 May    Late. The article on the census unexpectedly became clear to me, and I worked all morning. Then I went to the Olsufyevs’. A story about Polivanov80 sitting in a hole and receiving bread from above. Christians! In Siberia they pay fifty roubles for a live fugitive, and twenty-five for a dead one. Christians! Then at Seryozha’s window. He hates me for my faith. So does Tolstaya. A comic letter from her. Again hatred crept in. […]

7 May    […] How difficult my position is as a famous writer. Only with peasants am I completely natural, i.e. a real person. […]

8 May    Very late. Naum brought a letter from Ozmidov. He had nothing to bury his mother with. It was unpleasant at first. Reminded me of the distribution of money at Yasnaya. Something wrong about it. Still I was prepared to collect. But then Olsufyev and Morozova turned up and gave five roubles each, Seuron a rouble, Nanny twenty copecks, and eighteen roubles were collected. I said that it’s necessary to give to the poor. ‘Very well. Perhaps it is necessary.’ Still my family paid no heed. It was as if I was living at their expense. The more alive I am, the more dead they are. Ilya appeared to take some notice. At least one person in the family came to life! Alexander Petrovich began to tell a story. They were having dinner in the kitchen, and a beggar came. He said he was lice-ridden. Liza didn’t believe him. Lukyan got up and gave him a shirt. Alexander Petrovich began to cry as he said this. Isn’t it marvellous! I live with my family and the people closest to me are the down-and-out Alexander Petrovich and Lukyan the coachman. Went to Usov’s to fetch a book. The key to Usov: vanity and a big, powerful mind. He’s like Turgenev. Less refined, but more intelligent. From there to Lazarev’s. A kind, gentle old man. Very loving. He was glad to see me. At home everything is just the same – not too bad. Went to Seryozha’s. Kostenka, Mashenka, Hélène.81 Then a walk back through exceptional rain. Read about Kravkov in The Historical Bulletin.82 Important.

11 May    Read about Danton and Robespierre. Wonderful. […]

12 May    Early. Tried not to smoke. I’m making progress. But it’s good to see one’s rottenness. Had a peaceful journey. Didn’t speak to anyone. Read Mikhaylovsky on myself in Notes of the Fatherland for ’75.83

The town has corrupted me very much. Vanity has begun to rear its head again. It’s nice at Yasnaya – quiet – but, thank God, I’ve no desire for pleasure, only demands on myself.

Emerson is good.84 The journey passed quite quietly.

13 May    Room tidied before 10. I told them not to tidy it. Began revising my article. Can’t get on with it. Read Emerson. Profound, bold, but often capricious and confused. […]

Went for a walk. Felt miserable just walking about aimlessly. Called in to the village. Talked to Yevdokim and Sergey Rezunov. Tried to suggest a collective job of work, with the surplus profits going to the poor. At the words ‘poor’ and ‘for God’s sake’ – only indifference and contempt. ‘No, they wouldn’t agree to it.’ But I don’t despair. I must be naive like Chertkov.

14 May    Went for a walk with the young children and Masha. Picked a lot of mushrooms. It was pleasant. I stopped in the wood. Began telling my fortune – influence enormous, great, average, so-so, small, very small, insignificant. Twice it came out very small. I’ve had experience of fortune-telling before – it’s a habit. But very small intrigued me. After all it’s the best thing I can wish for. The most enormous task after all is always very small. For God, any task is very small. […]

19 May    […] Nothing worth mentioning – for a month. I’ve done nothing. Attempts to start, and work started, can only count as something when I’ve finished. Only one thing: I’ve done nothing bad, I know. If I have towards the family, then it’s less than before, and besides, Bugayev’s idea85 is firmly fixed in my mind and gives me strength. I’m becoming reliable. Then again there is the awareness that it’s only necessary to do good in your own vicinity, to make people round about you glad – without any purpose – and that itself is a great purpose.

20 May    Spiritual agitation again. I suffer terribly. Obtuseness, deadness of spirit – that I can stand, but on top of that there is rudeness and self-assurance. I must learn how to endure that too, if not with love, at least with compassion. I’ve been irritable and gloomy since morning. I’m ill. Got up earlier. Drank coffee with the children. Read Hypatia.86 Got a letter from Chertkov. A ray of light in the darkness that has thickened even more since the arrival of Tanya.87 Petitioners: Kubyshkin in tears. His horse has been sold for one and a half roubles. He’s in tears. There’s no justice. An old widow with four children, her land is being seized. Taras and Konstantin have come to blows with Osip. The steward wants to flog them. Mikheyev is complaining that he’s been done out of his share. And Nikolay Yermishkin brandishes his fists at the meeting – he was drunk. Nanny says that however much you help your own people, nobody will remember your good deeds when you’re old – they’ll drive you out of the house. The priest’s wife says that nowadays women won’t marry without money. The Kuzminskys talk about fashions and the money they need for them. How can one live here, how can one burrow through all this mass of sand? I’ll go on digging. Smoked, and talked in an unpleasant tone at tea. (2).

21 May    Earlier. Coffee with the children. Read Hypatia. A mass of petitioners. Widows deprived of their share of land, beggars. How depressing this is to me, because it’s false. I can’t do anything for them. I don’t know them. And there are too many of them. And there’s a wall between them and me. A talk with my wife over tea – anger again. Tried to write – couldn’t get on. Went to Tula. On the way, a mother and daughter. Her son-in-law, a bricklayer, had driven a peasant out beyond Sergiyevskoye. The peasant’s wealth (he boasted he would get a bride with 2,000 roubles) led him astray, and the bricklayer tried to kill him in a valley with an axe he had taken with him. The peasant snatched the axe away. The bricklayer asked forgiveness. The peasant handed him over in the village. It’s awful! Old Rezunova brought me in a kerchief a plait of her hair which Taras had pulled out. How can you help with this sort of thing? How can you shed light when you’re still full of weaknesses yourself which you haven’t the strength to overcome? Did everything in Tula without getting off my horse. Got back at 6. Read a bit and stitched boots. Had a long talk with Tanya. It’s impossible to talk. They don’t understand. And it’s impossible to remain silent. Smoked and was intemperate. (2).

22 May    Late. Talked with the children about how to live – to be one’s own servant. Verochka said: ‘Well, that’s all right for a week, but surely you can’t live like that.’ And this is what we bring our children to! I tried to write – but in vain. Weakness and idleness. I’ll go for a walk.

Thought hard about my life as I was walking – how all that is bad is inside me – i.e. in a place where it can be removed from. […]

23 May    Got up late, in good spirits. A petitioner, a peasant from Shchyokino, obviously just begging, and a stupidly bourgeois teacher afraid he has talent as a writer and that it will be buried. I told him gently, but plainly, to give it up. Sat down to write. Couldn’t get on with it. Went for a walk, like a man bemused, to the Chepyzh wood. Then to the Zaseka. Thought a lot about my wife. I must love her and not get angry; I must make her love me. That’s what I’ll do. Hardly smoked at all. Went for a ride with Masha in the evening, and stitched boots cheerfully.

26 May    I’m terribly weak. Two extremes – flights of the spirit and the power of the flesh. Misha Kuzminsky is still an unspoiled boy. And they will spoil him, artificially, in our name. Walked round the Zakaz. An agonising struggle. I can’t control myself. Searched for the causes: tobacco, intemperance, lack of work for the imagination. It’s all nonsense. The only cause is the lack of a loved and loving wife. It began that time fourteen years ago, when the string snapped, and I became aware of my loneliness. That’s still not the reason. I must find a wife in her. I must, and can, and will. Lord, help me. […]

27 May    Earlier. Reading Augustine.88 Walked along the main road. Suddenly felt quite calm. Thought a lot about the fact that Paul’s, Augustine’s, Luther’s and Radstock’s teachings of redemption – the awareness of one’s weakness and the absence of struggle – are of great importance. Struggle – the reliance on one’s own powers – weakens those powers. Don’t torment yourself, don’t tighten the string and don’t weaken it by doing so. But feed yourself with the food of life. It’s the same as redemption. It would be very interesting to find out – will temptation go on tormenting me now, once I stop struggling against it?

Two good days. After dinner I went to meet Kuzminsky. They hate each other. Then I went on my own to Kozlovka to the boys. A wonderful night. It became so clear to me that our life is the fulfilment of a duty imposed on us. And everything is done so that its fulfilment should make us glad. Everything is suffused with joy. Sufferings, losses, death – all this is good. Sufferings bring happiness and joy, just as work brings rest, pain the awareness of health, the death of one’s near ones the awareness of duty, because this alone is consolation. One’s own death is a consolation. But you can’t say the reverse: the rest doesn’t bring tiredness, health – pain, or the awareness of duty – death. All is joy once there is an awareness of duty. The life of man, so far as it is known to us, is a wave, all clad in brightness and joy.

Kuzminsky is tedious. Very lifeless. The children, Ilya and Lelya,89 have arrived, full of life and temptations, against which I am almost powerless.

28 May    Early. Unwell, bilious, slept badly, but still all right. Will it really go on like this? The Kuzminskys are quarrelling. I spoke to her. Spoke to their nice nanny. Did some mowing. Read my article90 – it could be good. A letter from Urusov yesterday – very good. His doubt about words is splendid. Feelings of pride over the publication of my book rose and then fell, thank God. Would it were so in the fulfilment of my duty. How happy I would be.

Wrote a mass of letters; wrote to Tolstaya, Armfeldt, Ozmidov, Urusov, Bakhmetev. I try to be serene and happy, but it’s very, very hard. All that I do is bad, and I suffer terribly from it. It’s as if I’m the only person who isn’t mad in a house full of mad people, run by mad people.

29 May    Early. Still unwell. Read; didn’t even try to write. Mowed. After dinner went for a walk with the girls to Bibikov’s. The children there clung to us. It’s enjoyable being with children. The terrible thing is that all the evil – the luxury, the dissipated life which we live – is my own doing. I’m corrupt myself, and I can’t get better. I could say I’m trying to get better, but so slowly. I can’t give up smoking, can’t find a way to treat my wife so as not to offend her and not to indulge her. I’m seeking. I’m trying. Seryozha91 came. My relations with him aren’t good either. Just the same as with my wife. They don’t see and they don’t know my sufferings.

3 June    Early. Didn’t sleep all night and feel abominable. Tried to write. Went to court.92 An institution for corrupting the people. And very corrupt itself. It scratches scabs – that’s what the court does. I said nothing. The dead man’s wife was a poor, good-natured woman. Dinner. She shouted in a nasty way. It hurts me that I don’t know what should be done. I said nothing. Went to the Rezunovs’,93 read the Gospels. At home, tea and a talk with Seryozha and Kuzminsky – good. Seryozha said: ‘It’s futile to do anything’. Kuzminsky said: ‘Scepticism’.

4 June    Late. Esprit de l’escalier [Wise after the event]. Thought about yesterday’s conversation, and then in the morning Kuzminsky and Seryozha joined me for coffee on their own. I said to Sasha that scepticism leads to unhappiness if a man lives out of tune with his ideals: the further he goes along that path the harder it will be for him. One should wish for such a man’s life to get worse. And the worse, the better. He agreed. I said to Seryozha that all people should carry the burden, and that all his arguments, like those of many others, were prevarications. ‘I’ll carry it when others do.’ ‘I’ll carry it once it’s started to move.’ ‘It will move of its own accord.’ Anything to avoid carrying it. Then he said: ‘I don’t see anybody else carrying it.’ And as for me, I’m not carrying it either. I only talk. This bitterly offended me. He’s just like his mother, malicious and unfeeling. I was very hurt. I wanted to go away at once. But that’s just weakness. Act for the sake of God, not for other people. Do as you know best for your own sake, and not to prove anything. But it hurt terribly. Of course it’s my fault if it hurt. I struggle, I douse the fire that has kindled in me, but I feel that this has weighed the scales down heavily. And indeed, what use am I to them? What are all my torments for? And however hard a vagrant’s life is (and it isn’t hard) there can’t be anything in it to compare with this he art-ache.

Read through the extract I copied out, and revised it a bit. I’ll do some mowing and stitch some boots. Tomorrow I’ll get up at 5. But I don’t yet undertake not to smoke. Mowed for a long time. We had dinner. Then I went to stitch boots until late in the evening. Didn’t smoke. All round me the same parasitic life goes on.

5 June    Got up at 5. Woke the children up. Walked to Pavel’s94 and settled down to work. Worked quite hard. Didn’t smoke. At 12 I went to have breakfast and encountered just the same malice and injustice. Yesterday Seryozha made the scales tip, today she did. If only I could be sure of myself, for I can’t continue this barbaric life. Even for them it would be an advantage. They would come to their senses if they have anything like a heart.

Mowed. Stitched boots. Can’t remember what I did. The girls love me. Masha clings to me. A letter from Chertkov and an officer.

10 June    Woke up at 8, tired. Walked a bit and thought. Read Notes of the Fatherland. A Russian factory worker gets five times less, and has fewer holidays.95 Thought about my article. I think I made a false start. I must give it up.

11 June    Got up with an effort at 6. Scribbled some letters, went to Tula to the post. Tired. Couldn’t do anything. Went for a bathe. I’m more composed, stronger in spirit. In the evening a cruel conversation about the Samara money.96 I try to do what I would do in the sight of God, but can’t avoid malice. This must stop.

Thought about my unsuccessful attempts at a novel about the life of the people.97 What an absurdity?! To have the idea of writing a work in which love would take first place, while the main characters would be peasants, i.e. people among whom love not only does not take first place, but among whom there isn’t that voluptuous love either, which one is required to write about. I feel like writing, and there’s a lot of work to do; but at present the change in my way of life prevents me from thinking clearly.

13 June    Early. Went round to Fedot’s.98 Terrible poverty. How we have refined within ourselves the techniques of cruelty! Actually I ought to have stayed there and not gone away until I had made him the equal of myself. […] After dinner I went to Yasenki. They were breaking stones – a sixteen-year-old boy, an adult, and an old man of sixty. They were slaving away in return for their food. The stone was hard. Prison labour from early morning till late at night. Pyotr Osipov99 expressed sympathy for the revolutionaries. He said: ‘Your servants have obtained forgiveness from God. I think their ancestors have at least earned that much for them.’

14 June    […] Our chief misfortune is that we consume more than we produce by working, and so we lose our way in life. To produce more by working than we consume can’t do any harm. It’s the highest law.

18 June    […] In the evening I did some mowing near the house. A peasant came about the estate. Went for a bathe. Came back cheerful and in good spirits, and suddenly there began some absurd reproaches on my wife’s part about the horses which I don’t need and which I only want to get rid of. I said nothing, but I was terribly depressed. I left,100 and wanted to leave for good, but her pregnancy made me turn back half-way to Tula. At home, bearded peasants – my two young sons – were playing vint. ‘She’s at croquet, didn’t you see her?’ said their sister Tanya. ‘I don’t want to see her.’ And I went to my room to sleep on the sofa, but my grief wouldn’t let me. Oh, how depressing it is! Still, I’m sorry for her. And I still can’t believe that she is completely wooden. Just woke up after 2; she came in and woke me: ‘Forgive me, I’m in labour, perhaps I’ll die.’ We went upstairs. Labour had begun – what is the most joyful and happy event in a family passed off like something unnecessary and depressing.101 A wet-nurse has been engaged to feed the baby.

If anyone governs the affairs of our lives, I would like to reproach him. It’s all too difficult and heartless. Heartless where she is concerned. I can see that she is heading with increasing speed towards destruction and terrible mental suffering. Went to sleep at 8. Woke up at 12. As far as I can remember I settled down to write. When my brother came from Tula, I told him for the first time in my life the whole gravity of my situation. I don’t remember how the evening passed. Had a bathe. Vint again, and I couldn’t help sitting down with them and staring at the cards.

June    Recapitulation. I’ve been trying to change my habits. I’ve been getting up early. Doing more physical work. And, unwillingly, talking more and more to the people round about me. I can’t say that the break with my wife is any worse, but it’s complete.

I don’t drink any wine at all, don’t put sugar in my tea and don’t eat meat. I’m still smoking, but not so much.

19 June    Got up before 8. Tidied my room in Seryozha’s presence. A merchant came to buy a horse. I went back on my word; 250 roubles.

The falseness of my postion is bad. I’m to blame for it. I must escape from it. Wanted to give the money to Tanya. It turned out that other people – i.e. Seryozha – were envious. You’ll read this one day, my son Seryozha – you must realise that you are very, very bad; and that you must work hard on yourself, and above all humble yourself. […]

21 June    The peasant women are working, mine aren’t. I worked with the peasants all day, except for the last ricks. In the evening in Masha’s room we began talking about how everyone had spent the day. It’s not a game. I’d make a habit of it. Of course there’s no need to compel people. Anyone who wants can tell.

22 June    Early. First the peasant women came; mine didn’t go out. Then I set off, and then Masha. She had a stomach-ache. I worked all day. Over tea the girls and Tanya and Alexander Mikhaylovich all told about their day and their sins. Tanya told how she had been angry at breakfast, and both the Kuzminskys had been angry with Trifonovna. I wanted to tell my sins, but couldn’t. Impure glances at women and malice towards my wife and Seryozha. Couldn’t express either the one or the other at all.

23 June    Got up at 7, worked with Blokhin without waiting for the peasants to arrive. […] Sent for Tanya. She had been busy raking. She is gentle too, but very spoiled. But she could be a very, very good woman. I worked non-stop, and was very tired. I couldn’t sleep – my hands ached, but I felt very good physically and mentally. They gave me a rick to do – i.e. a big load. I didn’t expect in my old age that I could learn so well and improve. The carting and storing are difficult. My wife is very calm and contented, and can’t see the complete break between us. I’m trying to do what I should. But I don’t know what I should do. I must do what I should every minute, and everything will come out as it should.

24 June    Got up not so early, feeling tired. Walked to Kozlovka. A letter from Urusov. Dreamed about going to France – one can live equally well anywhere. […] I demand a lot from those near to me. Conscience is stirring in the best of them, and that’s good. […]

I’ve been reading over my diary for these last days, looking for the cause of my temptations. It’s all nonsense. The only cause is lack of intensive physical work. I don’t sufficiently appreciate the happiness of freedom from temptation after work. This happiness can be cheaply bought with tiredness and aching muscles.

25 June    Got up early. Was five rows behind the peasants, but did my stint. Worked all day. Had no dinner. A beggarwoman from Tula came. I couldn’t do anything for her, but it hurt to refuse. And Akulina came from Kamenka. Almost treated her in an unfriendly manner too. Sent Tanya to make enquiries and to give some money. Alcide102 and Ilya joined in the mowing, but soon gave up and that was worse still. In the evening a letter from Tula from Chertkov. He’s afraid to renounce his property. He doesn’t know where his 20,000 comes from.103 It’s no good. I know – it comes from oppression and from people tired out with work. I must write to him. We gathered in my wife’s room to talk about our day. I spoke first and offended Masha.104 For their whole life is pitiful to me, and she provided the best example of it.

26 June    Got up exhausted and ill at 7 and set off to work: mowed all day without a break. Tanya came with some coffee. Very nice. Seryozha mowed. He’s impossible with his self-assurance and egoism. Some peasants came – purchases of the Myasoyedovo estate. They had to buy to rid themselves of an evil neighbour and to have some land, but they’re overstepping the mark. Talked with the peasants about Turkey and the land there. How much they know, and how instructive it is talking to them, especially when compared with the poverty of our own interests. […] My wife was glad of a chance to censure and abuse me. It’s difficult for me, but it seems there’s been some progress. And the result is a pretty kettle of fish. Everyone helped to clear the tea away together after croquet, and so made the servants laugh. As if it wasn’t funny enough already that well-fed people dying of boredom should sit and make busy people waste time on trifles.

30 June    […] Sasha Kuzminsky is positively kind and good. He came in the evening and went for a bathe, and brought me my underclothes. So naturally and kindly. Had a talk with him about ambition. Ambition and vanité in general occupies the empty space left unoccupied by philosophy. As the content of philosophy expands, vanité is eliminated. Read Emerson’s Napoleon105 – a typical, greedy, bourgeois-egoist – wonderful.

I don’t notice how I sleep and eat, and I’m strong and composed spiritually. But at night there are sensual temptations.

3 July    Got up at 6. They had already done four rows each. I mowed with a terrible effort. Masha brought some coffee and went away. Went to dinner early. Fell asleep. Sonya is capricious and is always talking about herself. It’s a terrible torture.

6 July    A bad day. Got up before 8, tidied my room, wanted to walk to Tula, but felt so weak that I rode on horseback. Before I left, Artemov came about the land. I spoke to him rudely and maliciously: he has covetous eyes. And I went off depressed. It was stuffy in Tula. Clean people in banks were rattling their abacuses and wetting their fingers on sponges, making a tapping noise as they counted out banknotes; and along the roadside peasant women were stacking the hay, and the men mowing and harrowing. Beggars and pilgrims were walking about, weak and hungry. Got back crushed and exhausted, and sent the money to the post. I was dreaming as I rode back of organising my life properly, i.e. giving up to others at least a part of what I have, and getting down first of all to running the estate. I hope I might be able to do it now, without being distracted and not forgetting that human relationships are more valuable than anything. Urusov was in Tula. A great deal of talk. At home, attempts at friendly relations – as if we’ve solved everything and, at the same time, don’t need to change anything.

7 July    Got up at 7. Drank coffee and talked to Mme Seuron. She told me that Tanya had thrashed Ustyusha. Went to Artemov’s to ask his forgiveness. But, fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t find him in. Came back home and had the misfortune to speak about non-stop tea-drinking. A scene. I went off. She’s beginning to tempt me carnally. I’d like to refrain, but I feel I won’t in present conditions. But cohabitation with a woman alien in spirit – i.e. with her – is terribly vile. […]

I’d just written this when she came to my room and started a hysterical scene – the sense of it being that nothing can be changed, and she is unhappy and she must run away somewhere. I was sorry for her, but at the same time I was aware that it was hopeless. She will remain a mill-stone round my neck and round the children’s until I die. Probaby it has to be so. I must learn not to drown with a mill-stone round my neck. But the children? Apparently it must be so. And it only hurts me because I’m short-sighted. I calmed her down like a sick woman. […]

9 July    Very hot, and I felt very unwell: itchiness, and depression, and sleeplessness. Stayed at home and read Meadows on China.106 He’s completely devoted to Chinese civilisation, like any intelligent, sincere man who knows Chinese life. Nowhere is the significance of ridicule more obvious than in the case of China. When a man is unable to understand a thing he makes fun of it. China has 360 million inhabitants, and its very rich, ancient, happy and peaceful people live according to certain principles. We ridicule these principles, and we think we have disposed of China. […]

12 July    Still getting up no later than 8. Reading Meadows, and the Gospels in Hebrew.107 I’m still unwell and weak – weak in all respects. The whole day passed uneventfully. Conversation and interest in it subsided. Announced I would walk to Kiev. Went upstairs during the night. Had words. I don’t understand how to save myself from suffering, and her from the destruction to which she is flying headlong. Prayed yesterday; that means I’m weak. People pray to gods and saints – especially saints – because they need help. And if we lived a Christian life, there would be help from people and from the Church. All that we reasonably pray for, people can do for us – they can help by work, intelligence and love. Two letters from Chertkov. His mother hates me, as well she might. Dreamed about Chertkov. He suddenly began dancing, gaunt as he was, and I saw he’d gone mad.

14 July    Missed several days and tried to write everything down from memory on Wednesday. On that day, I think, I asked my wife to come, and she refused with cold spitefulness and the desire to hurt me. I couldn’t sleep all night. And during the night I got ready to go away, packed up my things and went to wake her up. I don’t know what was the matter with me – bitterness, lust, moral exhaustion – but I suffered terribly. She got up, and I told her everything, told her that she had ceased to be a wife. A helpmate for her husband? She hasn’t helped me for a long time, but only hinders me. A mother to the children? She doesn’t want to be. A nurse? She doesn’t want to be. A companion of my nights? She makes a bait and a plaything even out of that. I was terribly depressed, and I felt I’d spoken uselessly and feebly. I was wrong not to have gone away. I think I shan’t be able to avoid it. I’m terribly sorry for the children, though. I love them more and more and pity them.

15 July    Woke up at 10. A talk with Seryozha. He was rude without any cause. I was angry and gave him a thorough reprimand – bourgeois habits, and obtuseness, and spitefulness, and self-satisfaction. Suddenly he said that nobody loved him, and began to cry. God, how it hurt me. I walked about all day and managed to catch Seryozha after dinner and said to him: ‘I’m ashamed.’ He suddenly burst out sobbing, and started to kiss me and say: ‘Forgive me, forgive me.’ It’s a long time since I experienced anything like it. There’s happiness.

17 July    Got up late. But had coffee with the children. Still correcting the German translation108 in the mornings and read with surprise that it leaves people unmoved. In the evening, I went mushrooming with the children and stayed behind to mow with the mowers from Baburino. At home relations are tense again, but only with my wife. All the others love me.

26 July    All day with Gay. I’m miserable without physical work. Sonya is nice, and so are Seryozha and Tanya and Masha; Ilya is the worst of all – he’s rude, spiteful and egotistical. Another delightful letter from Chertkov, with a cutting from Matthew Arnold.109 Readings for the people, and for us. But Chertkov insists that it’s necessary first of all to explain the Gospels to the people, and he’s right.

Saw Gay off and went to bed late upstairs.

27 July    Got up late today, felt fresh. Spoke upstairs about Gay. About the fact that with a moral man family relations are complicated, but with an immoral one everything goes smoothly. Read Ground Ash.110 It’s a revivalist work – full of pathos, but good. Walked to the plantation and went for a bathe. At home relations were friendly. Thought: we reproach God, and lament that we encounter obstacles in carrying out Christ’s teaching. Well, what if none of us had discordant families? We would all be friends and live happily and colourlessly.111 And what about other people? Other people wouldn’t even know. We want to rake the fire together into a heap, so that it will burn more easily. But God has dispersed the fire throughout all the logs. They catch light, but we are sad because they don’t make a big fire.

Thought more about a book for the people, again in the form of a confession – good.112 Did a little mowing. […]

28 July    Woke up, and there was Sukhotin. What a pathetic and insignificant creature. It’s particularly astonishing, because to outward appearances he’s gifted. We bathed and all went mushrooming. A big dinner. I don’t remember the evening. All a waste of time. To eat food and have no work to show for it, to acquire knowledge and not to pass it on – that is real onanism. You will ejaculate more and more often, and you will be more and more loathsome to yourself and to others. I’m every sort of onanist. I must stop being one.

6 August    Another three days have passed, and I can’t remember them. Got up late today. Feverish condition. Worry and anxiety about the translation, and about the horses, and even about going mushrooming. I want to die, both when I’m physically ill, and even more when my soul is in chaos. Re-read my article on the census. Still don’t want to give it up; made some corrections to it. It’s strange that what couldn’t help standing out was the fact that I unexpectedly found them better than I am. It must be so. In the morning, a talk with Tanya. And I came to realise that among the whole series of things that fill up our lives there are those that are real and those that are frivolous. To know which things are real and which are frivolous is to know all about life. In the evening stupid charades and then the post-box.113 Tanya was moved by Sonya’s poem.114 The three of them – the two Mashas and she herself – tarted to cry. The children are gradually becoming aware of their false position. Vyacheslav115 quarrelled with Seryozha, and Seryozha used my own words.

9 August    […] Came home. Sonya and I were reconciled. How glad I was. Actually if she were to take it upon herself to be good, she would be very good.

21 August    Mushrooms, and sickness in the offing. Re-read the article and suddenly it all became clear. I lied in putting myself in the foreground. It’s only necessary to stop lying, and all will be well.

22 August    My wife’s nameday. The post-box. Shakhovskoy. I wrote about the patients in the Yasnaya Polyana hospital.116 It was good. Something is stirring them somehow. I don’t know how.

25 August    […] Can’t remember, either today or yesterday I talked to Shakhovskoy and trembled all over as I pointed out the truth to him: that when you are doing the works of the devil – war, law courts, oaths – you can’t talk about Christ. I’m already feeling unwell.

26 August    A mass of people. Said something disagreeable to my brother Seryozha about his not knowing English literature. I shouldn’t have done. […] Went mushrooming. Urusov. My wife didn’t follow me but went off, with no idea where, only not after me; it’s been like that all our life.

28 August    I’m 2 × 28 years old. Our folk have gone to Tula to see Vera Shidlovskaya off. I’m glad I’m alone; read Michelet on the ancient Persians. Some good thoughts. Unwell. Pleasant, friendly relations with my wife. Told her some unpleasant truths, and she wasn’t angry. In the evening I read Maupassant. Struck by his mastery of colours; but he has nothing to write about, poor man.

29 August    […] Got up late, feverish during the night. Sonya tidied my room, and then shouted in a nasty way at Vlas. I’m accustoming myself not to get angry, and to see this as a moral deformity, which I must recognise as a fact and whose existence mustn’t interfere with my actions. Went for a walk in the sun. A mass of thoughts asking to be written down.

31 August    […] Had dinner on my own and called on the Kuzminskys. They were on the point of quarrelling. In the morning, as he was dressing, he asked about Sonya. She replied: ‘I can’t shout.’ He was offended; all the old trouble came to the surface, and he started saying that they hated each other and couldn’t go on living like that. She said nothing. But in the evening she took up the conversation again and reproached him for his irritability, verging on madness. He tried to justify himself, but was gloomy. In my presence she began to tell him that she had married him for love. But I know she has told Sonya that that wasn’t so. And it suddenly became clear to me what women’s strong points are: coldness – and something which they can’t be held responsible for because of their weak powers of thought – deceitfulness, cunning and flattery. […]

1 September    Got up late, read some Michelet. Hercules – the deification of labour and heroic deeds. A talk with Tanya about the fact that women seldom or never love – i.e. surrender their outlook on life to their beloved. They are always cold. She was genuinely embarrassed that I had spied out their truc [trick]. […]

2 September    […] A talk: women’s power – flattery – the fact that they can love. We are so convinced we deserve love that we believe them. I’m wrong to confine this to Sonya. It’s a universal thought and one that is very new and important for me. […]

4 September    Stitched shoes all day, made some mouthpieces and cut down some lime trees. Went to the bath-house and waited for Sonya. She came. I was tired.

5 September    A talk in the morning, and unexpected malice. Later she came down to my room and nagged at me until she was beside herself. I said nothing and did nothing, but was depressed. She ran out in hysterics. I ran after her. I’m terribly exhausted.

12 September    Read about Buddhism – its teaching. Wonderful. The teaching is just the same. The only mistake is wanting to save oneself from life – entirely. The Buddha doesn’t save himself, but saves other people. He’s forgotten that. If there was nobody to save, there would be no life. The teaching that one doesn’t ask questions about eternal life is admirable. A comparison with a man wounded by an arrow, who doesn’t want to be healed until he knows who wounded him.

Felled trees. Walked through the woods with Sonya. After dinner I walked with all of them and stitched boots – badly. Read with the children: instead of the rubbishy Pasynkov read An Outing to the Woods.117 It was a success.

13 September    More than a week has passed again, and I’ve written nothing. Incontinence today … I’m ashamed. In the morning the girls came to do problems. It was very enjoyable. Then I read Nekrasov in order to read him to the children. Went for a walk with everybody. Called in at Fedot’s. He – a man dying of a wasting disease – eats cucumbers and mushrooms. It’s impossible to live like that.

Had a sleep after dinner. Read Nekrasov, Shchedrin and Turgenev’s An Outing to the Woods with the children. All very good. […]

Notes

1 An outline of Tolstoy’s later story known in Maude’s translation as A Spark Neglected Burns the House.

2 Extracts from S. Julien’s French translation Le livre de la voie et de la vertu, Paris, 1841.

3 N. L. Ozmidov, a copyist and distributor of Tolstoy’s banned books and later a collaborator on The Intermediary (Letters, II, 404, fn.1).

4 A member of a secret society for disseminating socialist ideas, who emigrated after a house search and later returned to become a doctor in Kiev.

5 From whom Tolstoy was taking lessons.

6 Praise of Folly.

7 Tolstoy was reading Confucius in James Legge’s three-volume English edition The Chinese Classics.

8 Letters from the Country by D. D. Golokhvastov, which was directed against the Populist writer A. N. Engelhardt’s collection of letters of the same title, and advocated large-scale private, as opposed to communal, ownership of land.

9 What I Believe.

10 The first mention of Tolstoy’s plan to compile a collection of sayings and aphorisms from the works of great writers and thinkers for daily reading (translated in Letters as A Circle of Reading). Several volumes were written in the 1900s.

11 The figures here and elsewhere refer to Tolstoy’s enumeration of his daily ‘sins’. The figures normally follow the particular offence.

12 A. K. Malikov – see 1881, Note 8. A. G. Orfano – a retired officer who had been tried and acquitted on a charge of maintaining contacts with Herzen and Ogaryov in London and who later fell foul of the authorities again for building a factory run on cooperative lines. He was critical of Tolstoy’s What I Believe.

13 Tolstoy’s most famous and dedicated disciple and the dominant figure in his life from this time onwards (Letters, II, 367 ff.). Their correspondence extended to nearly a thousand letters. In this one he outlined his plan for setting up a model farm.

14 A. P. Ivanov, a copyist.

15 I.e. Le Juif errant, Sue’s novel, with Ahasverus as the main character.

16 V. F. Orlov, a teacher who had stood trial in the Nechayev case, told Tolstoy about the Populist revolutionary N. A. Ishutin, whose death sentence in 1866 had been commuted to hard labour for life and who spent eleven years in Siberia, mentally ill. P. G. Uspensky had been sentenced to hard labour for his part in the Nechayev affair, and was hanged by his fellow prisoners on false suspicion of treachery.

17 There are several poems on the theme of death in Fet’s Evening Lights.

18 The philosopher V. S. Solovyov’s article On Populism and Populist Causes in Russia.

19 It is not known what book is meant.

20 L. D. Urusov’s translation into French of Tolstoy’s What I Believe.

21 A noun from yurodivy, often translated as a ‘holy fool’ or ‘God’s fool’, a simpleton believed to possess divine gifts of prophecy. In certain contexts I have translated yurodivy as ‘an eccentric’.

22 Fyodorov (1881, Note 26).

23 N. N. Zlatovratsky – one of the most outstanding representatives of so-called ‘peasant belles-lettres’; V. N. Marakuyev – an educationalist, who had published some of Tolstoy’s stories in the People’s Library and discussed with him a project for founding a people’s publishing house.

24 Figure (1) – i.e. Tolstoy’s first sin of the day – is in the omitted passage.

25 Physical Labour as an Essential Element of Education by S. N. Krivenko, a Populist writer and later one of the editors of Russian Wealth.

26 A. P. Ivanov’s story was used by Tolstoy in What Then Must We Do?

27 A house in a particularly impoverished quarter of Moscow which Tolstoy first visited in connection with the Census of 1882, and described in grim detail in What Then Must We Do?

28 N. V. Bugayev, professor of mathematics of Petersburg University and father of the Symbolist poet and novelist Andrey Bely.

29 Relatives of Tolstoy’s wife.

30 These boots are now on display in Tolstoy’s town house in Moscow.

31 He disagreed with an interpretation of Tolstoy’s in the latter’s Short Exposition of the Gospels.

32 He described the appalling working conditions there in his ‘article’ What Then Must We Do?

33 L. D. Obolensky.

34 His daughter, whose worldly way of life at the time distressed her father.

35 The first mention of what eventually became the unfinished Notes of a Madman.

36 Frau Sophie Behr’s German translation of What I Believe, published the following year in Leipzig.

37 Number (2) should evidently be number (1).

38 His Poshekhoniye Stories.

39 Y. P. Letkova’s A Psychiatric-zoological Theory of Mass Movements, a critque of articles by C. Lombroso, one of which concerned genius and madness.

40 A. A. Stakhovich, the brother of M. A. Stakhovich, the liberal politician and man of letters (Letters, II, 673), and an amateur actor of some distinction. He later published his memoirs of Tolstoy.

41 Sonya.

42 A bookshop on Mokhovaya Street.

43 The article in question dealt with a rare case of hysteria.

44 I. Y. Repin, best-known as a realist painter (Letters, II, 379), who painted several portraits of Tolstoy and gave painting lessons to Tatyana. Tolstoy went the following day to see his picture They Did Not Expect Him, but it was not yet on display at the exhibition.

45 A professor of literature at Moscow University and a specialist on Shakespeare. He was at the time librarian at the Rumyantsev Museum.

46 An article in Archives of Psychiatry by Kovalevsky on two cases of pathological temporary aberration.

47 D. I. Svyatopolk-Mirsky had served in the Crimea and had met Tolstoy there. His letter recalled their meetings, and he enclosed some of his own poetry.

48 Tolstoy is referring to his wife.

49 A Woman’s Lot by the woman writer Marya Severnaya.

50 Inconsolable Grief, on view at the 12th Exhibition of ‘The Itinerants’ (Pereavizhniki).

51 They Did Not Expect Him, on view at the same exhibition.

52 P. M. Tretyakov, the art collector and joint founder with his brother of the Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow (Letters, II, 460).

53 A. V. Dmokhovskaya, the mother of a revolutionary who had been exiled to Siberia in 1880 and had died on his way there. She had recently sought Tolstoy’s help on behalf of her son-in-law, who had also been exiled to Siberia in the aftermath of the assassination of Alexander II.

54 Possibly the manuscript of an article directed against Darwinism. Tolstoy was certainly not a Darwinist, but may have found Strakhov’s approach too polemical.

55 Tolstoy read him in James Legge’s The Chinese Classics.

56 In English in the diary.

57 A. V. Olsufyev.

58 Vint – a card game for four, similar to auction bridge.

59 On his impressions of the Petersburg aristocracy celebrating Easter.

60 Anna V. Armfeldt, the mother of Natalya Armfeldt, who had been sentenced to fourteen years’ hard labour in 1879 for revolutionary activities. Tolstoy lent his support to the attempts to persuade the authorities to allow Anna Armfeldt to settle near her daughter’s place of exile, and was reading the daughter’s letters to her mother about her trial and her life in Siberia.

61 A. K. Alchevsky, a wealthy industrialist and husband of X. D. Alchevskaya, who had asked to meet Tolstoy in connection with the publication of reading material for the people.

62 What Should the People Read? A Critical Guide …, 1884.

63 To Alexandra Tolstaya, asking for her help over the Armfeldt case.

64 Sonya.

65 The Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Kremlin.

66 About the life of political prisoners in Siberia.

67 S. I. Bardina had been exiled to Siberia for revolutionary activities, but after escaping abroad she committed suicide three years later at the age of thirty. A collection of her poems was published posthumously abroad.

68 I.e. What Then Must We Do?

69 A reference to Matthew 25: 36: ‘I was in prison, and ye came unto me.’

70 Y. P. Blavatskaya, after extensive travels in America, Canada, India and even Tibet, founded the Theosophical Society in New York in 1875 and published Isis Unveiled (1877) whith its unorthodox theories about the evolution of mankind and religion.

71 Chertkov’s confession about ‘the devil within him’ and the sordid side of his personality.

72 The beginning of What Then Must We Do?

73 A draft introduction for The Intermediary was written, but not published in Tolstoy’s life-time.

74 The first mention of The Death of Ivan Ilich.

75 The artist’s son (the young Nikolay) had written to his brother to say he had decided to leave the university and devote himself to ‘the simple life’.

76 No person of this name is known to have existed, and the word is unintelligible.

77 S. A. Usov, a professor of zoology at Moscow University and a close friend of Tolstoy’s at the time.

78 N. V. Davydov, public prosecutor of the Tula district court; G. A. Zakharin, a professor of therapeutics at Moscow University.

79 V. A. Pisarenko, a landowner from the Oryol province; L. M. Lopatin, a professor of philosophy at Moscow University and president of the Moscow Psychological Society.

80 P. S. Polivanov, a medical student and a member of People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) who spent twenty years in the Peter and Paul and Schlüsselburg fortresses before being amnestied and escaping abroad from his place of exile. He committed suicide in France the following year. The reference is to his incarceration in a stone well for disobedience.

81 K. A. Islavin, Tolstoy’s sister and her daughter respectively.

82 In an essay about Y. M. Kravkov entitled A Socialist of the Last Century. Kravkov had been imprisoned on the orders of Catherine II for repudiating the sacraments and rituals of the Orthodox Church. He died in prison after eleven years.

83 N. K. Mikhaylovsky’s Notes of a Layman, in which he analysed the strengths and weaknesses of Tolstoy’s ideology.

84 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self Reliance, later published in Tolstoy’s edited and abbreviated version by The Intermediary.

85 Namely that ‘the moral law is the same as the physical law, only im Werden’ (Tolstoy’s note of 16 May).

86 Charles Kingsley’s novel. Tolstoy had noted on 18 May: ‘I’m reading Hypatia. Undistinguished. Interesting how he resolves the religious problem.’

87 Tatyana Kuzminskaya.

88 Tolstoy was reading St Augustine’s Confessions in French.

89 Tolstoy’s sons Ilya and Lev.

90 What Then Must We Do?

91 Tolstoy’s son.

92 To the village of Trosna to hear the case of two old peasants thought to have been wrongly imprisoned.

93 A Yasnaya Polyana peasant family.

94 P. P. Arbuzov, who taught Tolstoy cobbling.

95 Tolstoy had read an article about a parliamentary committee of enquiry into the labour crisis in France.

96 Tolstoy had suggested recovering debts owed by the peasants on his Samara estate and distributing the money to those in need there. His wife strongly protested.

97 Tolstoy had made more than one attempt between 1877 and 1879 to begin a novel about peasant settlers in Russia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

98 Fedot Orekhov, a Yasnaya Polyana peasant who worked for Tolstoy.

99 Pyotr Osipovich Zyabrev.

100 Tolstoy’s first attempt to leave home.

101 The birth of Tolstoy’s last child, Alexandra (Letters, II, 711).

102 Alcide Seuron, the son of Anna Seuron, the French governess.

103 Chertkov had written to say that it would be foolish to renounce the 20,000 roubles a year which he received from his mother, even though he did not know how she obtained them, since they could be used to help those in need.

104 Masha Kuzminskaya. The passage is obscure and the translation tentative.

105 In Emerson’s book Essays on Representative Men (Leipzig, 1856).

106 Thomas Taylor Meadows’ books The Chinese and Their Rebellions, London, 1856 and Notes on the Government and People of China, London, 1847.

107 Tolstoy had earlier taken lessons in classical Hebrew from a Moscow rabbi.

108 Behrs’ German translation of What I Believe.

109 The cutting has not survived.

110 H. W. Pulley’s The Ground Ash: A Public School story, 1874, which Chertkov had sent to Tolstoy from England. (Letters, II, 374, fn.1) ‘Revivalist’ is written in English with a Russian ending.

111 Tolstoy adds a Russian ending to the French fade.

112 Chertkov suggested that Tolstoy should write another Confession, but this time for the people. The idea appealed to him, but nothing came of it.

113 The opening and reading aloud of the notes, poems and messages of various kinds which the family ‘posted’ during the week for Sunday evening entertainment.

114 Sonya’s poem The Angel, published in her son Sergey’s book Ocherki Bylogo, about the relations between a husband and wife at Yasnaya Polyana, disrupted by the intervention of the devil and restored to harmony by the touch of an angel’s wing!

115 Vyacheslav Behrs.

116 Tolstoy wrote A Sick List of the Mental Patients of the Yasnaya Polyana Hospital for the ‘post-box’. The list included symptoms and prescribed treatment. He himself was the first patient.

117 Both stories by Turgenev. The second story is known in the Garnett translation as A Tour in the Forest.

1885

5 April    I think.1 The whole business of my life (unfortunately for me, because it’s a slippery and deceptive path through life) is the awareness of, and the expression of truth. I often have clearly expressed thoughts which make me glad and are helpful to me, but I can find no place for them and forget them. I will note them down. They will be useful to somebody.

Today. Thought about my unhappy family: my wife, sons and daughters who live side by side with me and deliberately put barriers between me and themselves in order not to see the truth and the good, which would expose the falseness of their lives, but would also save them from suffering.

If only they themselves could understand that their idle life, supported by the work of other people, can only have one justification: that of using their leisure in order to come to their senses, to think. But they deliberately fill their leisure with frivolous activities, so that they have even less time to come to their senses than those who are crushed by work.

I thought further: about Usov, and about professors: why do they – such clever and sometimes good people – live so foolishly and badly? Because of the power of women over them. They allow themselves to drift on the tide of life, because that is what their wives or mistresses want. It’s all decided during the night. They are only to blame for suppressing their awareness of their weakness.

I thought further: to do the will of Him who sent me – that is my food. What simple and profound significance. You can only be at peace and always content when you take as your purpose not something external, but doing the will of Him who sent you. I don’t want to have my picture printed in my works2 – it’s offensive and disagreeable to me. If I do my own will, I shall refuse, and will cause offence and sorrow. If, however, I do the will which is not my own, I shall ask them not to do it. And if they do do it, I shall be content, because I shall have fulfilled the will of Him who sent me.

Again, what a clear expression – ‘that is my food’. The majority of people do for themselves only what the body needs: food and sex and amusements; otherwise everything is done for other people. And so Christ said about all that field of work which people cultivate, not for themselves but for worldly fame, that you must work in it by doing the will of Him who sent you, and not for the sake of other people. And He said about this sort of activity that for Him it is like food – just as necessary and just as independent of what other people think. Doing the will of Him who sent us, just like eating and drinking, is not done for the sake of other people, but for our own satisfaction. It’s this that is necessary, this that is possible, and this that is the only path through life which leads to good, always and everywhere.

Notes

1 The only entry for 1885.

2 Sonya wanted to include Tolstoy’s picture in the edition of his works which she was preparing, and he reluctantly agreed.

1886

28 August    The main delusion in people’s lives is that each person individually thinks that the guiding principle in his life is the striving for pleasure and the abhorrence of suffering. And man by himself, without guidance, submits to this guiding principle – he seeks pleasure and tries to avoid suffering, and supposes this to be the meaning and purpose of life. But man can never live by pleasure, and cannot avoid suffering. Therefore this is not the purpose of life. And if it were, what nonsense it would be: the purpose of life – pleasure – when it doesn’t exist and cannot exist. But even if it did – the end of our life, death, is always bound up with suffering. If a sailor were to decide that his purpose was to avoid the swell of the waves, where would he make for? The purpose of life lies outside pleasure and suffering. It is attained by passing through them.

Pleasure and suffering are the breath of life: the breathing in and breathing out, food and its secretion. To make one’s purpose pleasure and the avoidance of suffering means to lose the path which intersects them.

The purpose of life is a universal or spiritual one. Unity.1 Only …

I don’t know anything more, I’m tired.

Notes

1 These ideas formed the basis of On Life which Tolstoy began in 1886.

1887

3 February1    Man uses his reason to ask: what for and why? – applying these questions to his own life and the life of the world. And his reason shows him that there are no answers. What happens is something like nausea and dizziness when faced with these questions. The Indians say in answer to the question ‘why?’: Maya tempted Brahma who existed within herself to create the world; and to the question ‘what for?’ they can’t think up even such a stupid answer. No religion has thought up, and the mind of man cannot think up, answers to these questions. What does this mean?

It means that reason has not been given to man to answer these questions, that the very asking of such questions signifies the delusion of reason. Reason can only solve the basic question ‘how?’ And in order to know how, it tries to solve the questions ‘why?’ and ‘what for’ within finite bounds.

What about ‘how?’ How to live? How not to live? The answer is – blissfully. And the possibility of this has been given to all living creatures and to me too. And this answer excludes the questions ‘why?’ and ‘what for?’

But why and for what reason cannot bliss be found immediately? Again, an error of reason. Bliss is of one’s own making, there is no other kind.

Notes

1 The only entry for 1887.

1888–1894

From 1888 onwards Tolstoy kept his diary fairly regularly and one important event which figures prominently during the last decade of the century is the serious famine which affected large areas of European Russia in 1891 and 1892. For the greater part of two years Tolstoy devoted much time and energy, with the active assistance of his wife and family, to the alleviation of suffering in the regions to the south of Tula and Ryazan, organizing relief programmes, soliciting contributions of food, clothing and money (not without qualms of conscience), opening ‘soup kitchens’ and generally alerting public opinion in Russia and abroad to his country’s serious economic plight. Working towards a common cause did something to improve the uneasy relations between Tolstoy, his wife and his growing sons at this period (a thirteenth and last child was born to the Tolstoys in 1888 when he was already sixty and Sonya forty-four), but the growing influence of Chertkov in Tolstoy’s life was a constant source of domestic friction which Sonya was never really able to overcome. In 1891 Tolstoy publicly renounced the copyright of all his works published after 1881, much to his wife’s annoyance. He finally gave up meat, spirits and tobacco, spent more and more of his time in the country, and turned his energies increasingly towards agricultural tasks when he was not either reading or writing.

Tolstoy’s major work of fiction during this period was the notorious Kreutzer Sonata which took as its text ‘But I say unto you that everyone who looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart’. The censors banned the story, but the Tsar Alexander III, as a result of the personal intercession of Tolstoy’s wife, allowed it to be included in Tolstoy’s Collected Works. In 1892 the Maly Theatre in Moscow gave the first production of his new play The Fruits of Enlightenment, which was later enthusiastically welcomed by Bernard Shaw as ‘the first of the Heartbreak Houses and the most blighting’. Tolstoy’s best-known play The Power of Darkness, with its sombre plot of greed, adultery, poisoning and infanticide, which had been written very quickly in 1886, was also given its first performance in Moscow in the 1890s. The Kingdom of God is Within You, a powerful statement of the case for non-resistance and against patriotism and war, was completed and sent abroad for translation and publication in 1893, while the articles Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves? (on the subject of alcohol and drug abuse), The First Step (advocating vegetarianism), Christianity and Patriotism and his preface to some of Maupassant’s stories were all written in the course of these few restless and extremely strenuous years.

1888

23 November, Moscow    A girl came recently and asked (such a well-known and false question!) what should I do to be of use? And having talked with her I realised that the great sorrow which millions suffer from is not so much that people live badly, but that they don’t live according to their conscience, their own conscience. People take as their conscience somebody else’s conscience, higher than their own (for example, Christ’s – the most common case), and not, apparently, being able to live according to another person’s conscience, they live neither according to that person’s nor to their own, but live without any conscience. I tried to persuade this young lady not to live according to my conscience, as she wanted to, but according to her own. But she, poor girl, doesn’t even know whether she has a conscience of her own. That is a great evil. What people need most of all is to discover for themselves and develop their own conscience, and then to live according to it, and not as everybody does – take somebody else’s completely foreign, inaccessible conscience and then live without one at all, but lie, lie, lie, in order to look like a person living according to some other chosen person’s conscience. And so I truly prefer a convivial rake who never reasons and rejects all rational considerations to a thinker who lives according to somebody else’s conscience, i.e. without one. The former may develop a conscience, the latter never will until he returns to the state of the former.

I’m still not writing – there’s no necessity of the sort which would pin me down to my desk, and I can’t force myself. My state of tranquillity – at not acting against my conscience – affords me quiet joy and the readiness to face death – i.e. affords me everything in life. Yesterday evening Yevgeny Popov1 was here; he’s twenty-four and in the same state as I am. Complicated relations with his wife which only a humble life can unravel, as a knot can only be untied by patiently following the thread with the whole ball of wool.

24 November    Began to write letters to Gay and Semyonov, but couldn’t. Read, and walked to the Sofiyika. Yes, in the morning I wanted to write An Issue of a Newspaper.2 I’ve had this idea for a long time: to write a review of a single issue, defining the importance of each article. It would be something terrifying. Walked through the arcade3 – it was terrible, like visiting a hospital for syphilitics. Tired, dozed off after dinner, read St Beuve, then stitched boots; Dargo4 came. He’s one of those people who only occupy space and move in time, but don’t exist; at least not for me, although I try to find the man who ought to be there. Yes, a long letter from ‘a Christian woman’ about On Life. I’ve rarely met such true tolerance, only twice – in an Englishman from Australia and in her. In the evening the children sat with me. Talked with Lyova. I’m glad.

Thought: life – not my life, but the life of the world which, with the renouveau of Christianity, is blossoming forth on all sides like spring in the trees and the grass and the water – is becoming unbelievably interesting to me. Indeed, this alone constitutes the whole interest of my life; but at the same time my earthly life is at an end. It’s as if I were reading; reading a book which was getting more and more interesting, when suddenly, at the most interesting place, the book came to an end, and it turned out to be only the first volume of a work in an unknown number of volumes, and the succeeding volumes couldn’t be obtained here. It could only be read abroad in a foreign language. But it certainly will be read.

Just now Andryusha’s teacher,5 a philologist who has just completed a higher degree, was saying that Andryusha is a poor student because he can’t explain things in words or write out an arithmetical problem. I said that to require an explanation is to require senseless learning by heart – the boy understands, but can’t yet find the words for it. He agreed and said: ‘Yes, we teachers are obliged to get them even to learn formulae by heart. For example we teach them that the discussion of a problem must begin with the word if.’ If I’d been told that that is how they taught in Japan 1,000 years ago, I would have found it difficult to believe, but it’s happening in our country with the new products of our universities.

25 November    Unwell. Slept badly. Hapgood6 came. Hapgood: ‘Why aren’t you writing?’ I: ‘It’s a futile occuption.’ Hapgood: ‘Why?’ I: ‘There are too many books, and the world will go on just the same, whatever books are written nowadays. If Christ came and had the Gospels printed, ladies would try to get his autograph, and nothing more. We must stop writing, reading and talking; we must act.’ Read The Century:7 Trappists in America. Surely each of these 200 brothers who has taken the path of silence and hard work is 1,000 times more a philosopher, not only than a Grot or Lesevich, but a Kant, a Schopenhauer or a Cousin! Kennan’s8 pronouncements about the Russian government are edifying: I would be ashamed to be tsar of a country where there is no other means of protecting me except to send thousands of people, including sixteen-year-old girls, to Siberia. […]

26 November    It’s already 12 in the morning and I’m still only thinking. Read The Century. Marked things to copy out. If people were to make extracts, they could compile the sort of books which are needed. Pokrovsky came and brought his article.9 Very badly written, and again the same general lack of any scientific knowledge addressed to the masses: either he says nothing (water is wet), or he can’t say anything, because we speak different languages and live different lives. […]

The rest of the evening I read Leskov’s At the End of the World.10

29 November    […] Sat a while with Lyova and had a talk; went to the evening school,11 couldn’t make up my mind to go in, walked about for a couple of hours, called in after 10 and met the teachers; I’ll go on Thursday. In the morning and later on, a point in the Scriptures began to get clearer and clearer. Perhaps I’ll begin today; what – I don’t know, but what about – I do know.12 Yes, I received another splendid letter from Blake.13

30 November    Got up early, Lyova still unwell, stoked up the stove and am now ready to write. I’ve written nothing except a letter to Lisitsin and a copy of the things I’ve begun. I’m still trying to guess from cards (patience) what to write. Of all superstitions this is the only one which attracts me – trying to guess, or asking God what to do. This or that? I can only free myself from it by not doing things for myself, but for God (then there will be nothing to ask Him). For me, one thing is better than another, but for God everything is equally good or bad because what He needs is not facts, but the motives behind them. […] So, I spent all morning laying out patience and asking what I should write first, and decided to finish what I had begun, which turned out to be ten things in all.14 Went for a walk. Grot and Kostenka to dinner. Stolypin’s book Two Philosophies and his prizes.15 It’s astonishing for its lack of clarity, absurdity and pretentiousness. And, in effect, from Grot to him is only a matter of degrees. In the evening I just went round to the cobbler’s to ask about galoshes.

1 December    Reading newspapers and novels is rather like tobacco – a means of forgetting. Likewise idle conversation. One ought not to do these things, so as to be able instead to sit quietly and think, or play with a child and comfort it, or talk frankly with someone and help him, or most important of all work with one’s hands. In the morning Stakhovich senior and Flerov came – both alcohol and nicotine addicts; pathetic. Very cold everywhere. I’ll try not to read and not to lay out cards. In order not to read, the main thing is not to be afraid to be left with nothing to do if there really isn’t anything to do, according to the rule that it’s better not to do anything than to do nothing. But better still is work, real work and rest, and not the continual ‘neither one thing nor the other’ of our world.

1 December,    continuation. […] Went to the school in the evening. Was struck by the stupidity and lifelessness, and the discipline of mechanical teaching, and the dim, lacklustre eyes of the students: the factory, tobacco, lack of sleep, alcohol. […]

7 December    Late. Misha ill. Sonya sent for yet another doctor. When will they understand this simple thing that if doctors charge ten roubles to save you, what must the situation of the poor be like! And how then could you prosecute a person who killed an old man in order to rob him of ten roubles to engage a doctor and save his young son? Thought yesterday: serve people? But how, and what with? Not money or even physical services – sweeping the ice rink, stitching boots, washing clothes, sitting with a sick person at night. Perhaps all this is good, and better than doing it for oneself, but perhaps it is bad too, and, in effect, useless. The only useful and necessary thing is to teach a person to live well. And how is one to do that? The only way is to live well oneself. […]

People still can’t get on with each other: Dzhunkovsky with Khilkov, Chertkov with Ozmidov and Zalyubovsky, the Spenglers, husband and wife, Marya Alexandrovna with Chertkov, Novosyolov with Pervov. One reason is that all barriers of the proprieties and of the laws which facilitate living together have been removed, but that’s not all; one can console oneself like that, but it isn’t true. It’s a terrible proof of the fact that people who consider themselves so much better than others (of whom I am the first), turn out to be not one whit better when it comes to the test, to the examination. ‘I can’t live with him.’ ‘If you can’t live with him don’t live at all – he’s the one you have to live with.’ ‘I want to plough, only not this field’ (the first one that has to be ploughed). ‘It looks as if you were only boasting, and don’t want to plough.’ (This was so in my case with many, many people, especially with Sergey Sytin.) ‘I can’t live with him. We’ll separate and then it will be better.’ But how can it be better when you’ve done the worst thing it’s possible to do? Everything – a life of poverty, abstinence, hard work, humility even – all this is only necessary in order to be able to live with people, to live, i.e. to love them. And if there is no love, then none of this is worth anything either. Ploughing is necessary before the crops can grow, but if you are going to trample on the crops there’s no point in ploughing in the first place. […]

9 December    Slept sinfully. In the morning I finished stitching boots, went for a short walk and am now sitting down to dinner. A letter yesterday from Gay. A strange thing: my life is seemingly empty; and yet I’m completely calm. Everything that is bad is only inside me, in my lack of love. But things are improving, and for that reason I’m not depressed, but glad. Dropped off to sleep. Got up; two American women – sisters – one had crossed the Atlantic, the other the Pacific, and they met and are travelling on again, and have seen everything, and have seen me, but aren’t any the wiser. She16 asked: ‘Don’t you find it strange that they travel like this?’ I tried to say that one should live in order to be useful17 to others: she said that she had expected I would say that, but she can’t think any longer whether it’s true or not. Everyone went to bed. I sat up alone, quietly. And it was good.

12 December    Chopped up wood; I’m stoking up the stove. All these days I’ve been living a colourless, but transparent existence; I love everyone naturally, without any effort. Read. Went for a walk. A woman, lame in one leg, but strong. At home the Behrs brothers and their relatives. Felt good even with them. Masha came to say goodbye; she’s bored. The atmosphere at home is bad and depressing, and that’s all the more reason for not giving in. But Tanya, poor thing, wants to get married at all costs; still her choice is better than it might have been.18 Masha said that Marya Alexandrovna also said the same as Telicheyeva.19 But I’m so weak that in my heart of hearts I can’t agree. Yes, it’s a real problem. How easy it is to say something, and how difficult it is to feel like doing what you say.

Yes, yesterday or the day before I went to Fet’s. He told me about an argument with Strakhov. He, Fet, said that it’s immoral to refrain from doing something that gives pleasure. And he was glad he had said it. Why? Thereupon Grot came and was displeased with Gilyarov’s20 dissertation. Again, why? Why should Gilyarov defend self-love? Why should Grot defend love?

Yes, and yesterday I almost started a quarrel with my wife about why I don’t teach my own children. I didn’t recall at the time that it’s good to be humbled. Yes, there is such a thing as conscience. People either live above it or below it. The former case is painful for oneself, the latter obnoxious. Better to live according to the demands of a growing conscience, always a little above it, so that it can grow up and reach the height already occupied above it. I live above my conscience, but it doesn’t catch up with me: especially over the fact that I take offence and am always sensitive and vain, and don’t want to stop publishing anything more in my lifetime.

13 December, Moscow    Chopped wood, tidied the room, stoked up the stove, wrote my diary for the 12th and am going to have breakfast. Read, did nothing. Went for a walk. Thought: in life we are frozen, corked-up vessels, whose purpose it is to be uncorked and poured out, to establish communication with the past and the future, to become a channel and to share in the universal life. The death of the body doesn’t do this. It only decants us anew, as it were, and once again into corked-up vessels. Went to Sytin’s. He’s bought the journal The Contributor. Twenty-four hours have gone by and I’m still in doubt what to do. Is it possible to take part?21 […] A long letter from an Englishman about What I Believe. He seems to be preoccupied with it, and says he can’t rest until he’s solved his problem, but says himself ‘I have no leisure’, and hasn’t looked up to see whether the Greek word is πορνεία [fornication] or μοιχεια [adultery]. A good letter from dear Chertkov and his wife. I must reply. Yes, and another letter yesterday from N. Dole22 and a cutting from Forum with an article by Farrar23 – utterly shallow. An objection to Christ in the name of Christ. Terrible. Replied via Tanya.

15 December    In the morning I thought about the journal – it’s possible. I must select something for each section from my old writings. On the Gregorian and Julian calendars. On babies’ dummies. Yesterday I read Portugalov’s article24 on infant mortality. Chopped wood, stoked up the stove, and am now going to fetch wood and on to Bogoyavlensky’s.25

Walked about fifteen versts. Got back at 5. The Behrs for dinner. […] Sonya said at dinner: ‘One must be completely stupid to believe another person, and not to have one’s own thoughts.’ I said: ‘Nobody has his own thoughts, but it’s only a question of whether to follow the thoughts of Christ or Mme Minangois.’26 She feels the burden of her life more and more, but I doubt if she will choose another path in my life-time. I’m no longer sorry. So be it. […]

19 December    Got up early. Chopped wood; I’m going to stoke up the stove and have breakfast. Thought: governments defend the interests of people and exact money and keep an eye on the fulfilment of financial contracts. Why do they (governments) not keep an eye on the fulfilment of agreements, even family ones, and especially labour agreements? This is what I call a labour agreement: we agree that you, B, should fetch me firewood and bread, and I will teach you. Governments can’t do this – their guilt would be apparent. But we can and must call them to account on the basis of the very principle which they have flaunted and which they support. Went to Hapgood’s and to Sytin’s. Was late. A cold. Read in the evening. Chernyshevsky’s article on Darwin is splendid.27 Force and clarity. Talked with Lyova about the universal scourge of onanism and the falsehood under which debauchery is concealed.

30 December, Moscow    Slept terribly badly. Began to write a letter to Khilkov. My thoughts were aroused and I wanted to write them down. Thought: simple love for all is a platform on a slope. A rest. And then again. All good deeds are … Or rather, evil deeds are concealed behind good names. In order to begin to do good deeds, one can’t take the artificial images of good deeds and make real ones out of them; one can’t make living trees out of wooden boundary stakes, but one has to pull up the stakes and plant something living, and not a tree but a seed; one has to begin everything from the beginning. […]

Notes

1 Y. I. Popov, a writer on agricultural themes, a collaborator on The Intermediary and a suitor of Tolstoy’s daughter Tatyana (Letters, II, 469).

2 He eventually did so twenty years later.

3 The Lyubyanka arcade or passage (the French term widely used before the revolution). The Sofiyika referred to earlier is the Sofiyiskaya Embankment opposite the Kremlin.

4 Nothing is known about him.

5 A. A. Alexandrov, Andrey’s tutor, lived in the wing of the Tolstoy’s town house in 1888–9. He later founded and edited the journal Russian Word and taught at Moscow University. Two articles by him on Tolstoy were published in 1924.

6 Isabel Hapgood, an American writer and translator, who corresponded with Tolstoy and translated several of his stories and articles, as well as works by other major nineteenth-century Russian authors (Letters, II, 451, fn.7).

7 Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, published in New York.

8 George Kennan, the American journalist and traveller, who wrote extensively on Russian themes. His two-volume study Siberia and the Exile System (1891) is a standard work. At the time Tolstoy was reading an article in the Century by Kennan on political exiles and common criminals in Tomsk, which was sharply critical of the Russian government. (Letters, II, 466).

9 Y. A. Pokrovsky, a well-known Moscow paediatrician who wrote a major scholarly work on children’s illnesses, which Tolstoy persuaded him to revise and simplify for publication by The Intermediary, under whose imprint it appeared in 1889.

10 The theme of a Russian missionary bishop being saved from death in Siberia by a heathen native and concluding that missionary work was not what the natives needed was one which particularly appealed to Tolstoy.

11 Tolstoy hoped to take up teaching again, and visited a local evening school for young factory workers, but the school authorities turned down his request to be employed.

12 It is thought that he was proposing to write about various religious faiths.

13 An English religious writer, Albert Blake, author of Marriage (1888) and Modern Pharisaism (1888). He sent both books to Tolstoy, and Tolstoy wrote to him in reply.

14 These ten items are listed on a separate sheet, with numbers to indicate the order in which Tolstoy proposed to finish them.

15 D. A. Stolypin, a minor writer who, in his youth, had been a friend and second of Lermontov. Attached to his booklet Two Philosophies was the announcement of a prize, to be financed by Stolypin, for the best essay on the philosophy of Auguste Comte.

16 Sonya.

17 In English in the diary.

18 The prospective bridegroom was Y. I. Popov.

19 A reference to the advice of a certain Telicheyeva that Tolstoy should not publish anything more in his life-time.

20 A dissertation on the Greek sophists by a professor at Kiev University.

21 Sytin, the publisher, was about to acquire The Contributor, and had invited Tolstoy to collaborate in publishing and managing the journal, but Tolstoy refused.

22 Nathan Dole, an American who translated War and Peace and Anna Karenina and wrote quite extensively about Tolstoy.

23 F. W. Farrar, the English theologian and Dean of Canterbury. Apart from his writings on theology, he was also the author of Eric, or Little by Little. Tolstoy objected to Farrar’s article Count Leo Tolstoy in the American journal Forum, October 1888, and later said of him ‘I can’t stand Farrar. A false writer.’

24 A doctor and publicist. His article appeared in The Week, 1888.

25 A doctor friend of Tolstoy’s (despite his views on medicine, Tolstoy had a number of medical friends).

26 The proprietor of a fashionable women’s dress shop in Moscow.

27 In Russian Thought, IX, 1888. Tolstoy sympathised with Chernyshevsky’s criticism of Malthusian theory.

1889

1 January, Moscow    […] Dinner, depressing as always. Wanted to write about dummies, but didn’t manage to. We began to read Leskov’s Goldsmith1 in the presence of some young society ladies: Mamonova and Samarina. Only aesthetic judgements, that’s the only side they consider important. […]

2 January, Moscow    Began the new year in low spirits. Read Robert Elsmere2 – good, sensitive. Masha and Posha are distraught.3 It’s getting difficult. And there’s no chink of light. Death beckons me more often. […]

3 January, Moscow    Slept better, read Advance Thought,4 gave my ideas a shake-up. Walked to Polushin’s,5 Fet’s and Pokrovsky’s and went to fetch wood. Love and joy everywhere. At home we began to read Leskov after dinner; a Jewess came about the theatre. Should she be baptised in order to go on the stage? […]

5 January, Moscow    Very late. Misha ill and groaning. Had a talk with Posha. I love him more and more. A good letter from Chertkov. Read about Ruskin. Nothing special. Yes, went to Yanzhul’s6 yesterday; he gave me, or mentioned to me, a lot of good books, Kennan, books on the anarchists and socialism.

Took a late stroll to Gautier’s.7 At home read Kennan,8 and felt terrible indignation and horror when reading about the Peter and Paul fortress. If I were in the country, this feeling would bear fruit; here in town Grot and Zverev came and Lopatin as well:9 cigarettes, jubilees, anthologies, dinners with wine and professional philosophical chatter moreover. Zverev’s madness is terrifying. Homo homini lupus [Man is a wolf to man], no God, no moral principles – only flux. Terrible hypocrites, bookmen, and harmful ones at that.

10 January, Moscow    Got up early and continued writing my article 12 January10  until breakfast. Goltsev11 came. Read it to him and he approved it. Finished it and went to the editorial office (the Filosofovs gave me a lift). Extraordinary magnificence. Bookmen are hypocrites. After dinner I wrote to Posha, went for a walk and found the editor12 here on my return. Then Dunayev.13 Corrected the article, then walked to the printer’s with Lyova and Dunayev.

11 January, Moscow    […] I’ve just had dinner and want to write up the days I missed. Made a few rough entries. Read The Mormons’ Bible and The Life of Smith,14 and was horrified. Yes, religion, actually religion, is a work of deceit. Lies for a good purpose. […]

12 January, Moscow    Late. Sympathetic letters and visits.15 Yershov with his book.16 Yesterday and today I read a book about American socialism:17 about the two parties, international and socialist. The anarchists are quite right, only not about violence. An astonishing aberration. However, on this subject I think as I used to think about questions of religion, namely that it must and can be solved, but there hasn’t been a solution so far. […]

13 January, Moscow    […] Read about the Mormons, understood the whole story. Yes, here is a glaringly obvious example of that deliberate deceit which is a part of every religion. I even wondered whether this element of conscious fabrication – not cold-blooded fabrication, but a poetic, enthusiastic half-belief in itself – isn’t an exclusive sign of what is called religion. There is fabrication in Mohammed and Paul. There isn’t with Christ. It has been falsely imputed to Him. He would not have been turned into a religion had it not been for the fabrication of the resurrection, and the chief fabricator was Paul.

14 January, Moscow    Earlier. Stoked up the stove, read, did my diary and wanted to write a foreword for Yershov. Wrote very diligently. But feebly. And it won’t do like that. Chopped wood, walked about, met Nikolay Fyodorovich18 and had a chat with him. For him, as for Urusov, life and books contain not what is, but what he would like there to be. And the tone of conviction in his voice is astonishing. This tone is always in inverse proportion to the truth. […]

17 January, Moscow    Earlier, fetched some water, chopped some wood, stoked up the stove and before sitting down to work went round to Zlatovratsky’s; saw Nikiforov19 there, gave him some work to do, and called in on the Mamonovs. Tired and unwell. […]

18 January, Moscow    Early, chopped wood. A Molokan20 from Bogorodskoye came. Read upstairs, Telicheyev and another gentleman came to ask me to intercede on behalf of a governess due to be exiled. Behaved badly towards them. No love for them, and was impatient and garrulous. Before that I’d read something about myself in an article by Shelgunov in Russian Thought21 and was sad and ashamed. Yes, yes, yes – it’s necessary to abandon all plans to write and to do anything for myself, and preserve one thing only: the readiness to endure offence and humiliation; humility and a concern only with the possibility of doing good to others. […]

24 January, Moscow    Overslept till very late. Poor, tormented Sonya came to me and said something that hurt me – I managed to take it well. […] According to the symptoms, Vanechka has tuberculosis and will die.22 I’m very sorry for Sonya. I have a strange feeling of pity for the child, of reverential awe in the presence of this soul, this germ of a most pure soul in a tiny weak body. His soul has only just been dipped in the flesh. I think most likely he will die.

Recently a strange and very joyful thing has begun to happen to me – I’ve begun to feel the possibility of the constant joy of love. Previously I was so overwhelmed and choked by the evil surrounding and engulfing me that I only used to reason about love and imagine it, but now I’ve begun to feel its blessing. It’s as if shafts of light and warmth have begun to emerge now and then from under a pile of dry logs; and I believe, and know, and feel love and its blessing. I feel what is standing in the way and obscuring it. Now I’m conscious in quite a new way of my ill disposition towards a person– it was Tanya yesterday – and I’m afraid and feel that I’m blocking out the warmth and light from myself. Moreover, I often feel such warmth that I feel that as long as I love and have pity, nothing can disturb the state of quiet joy of the true life. […]

25 January, Moscow    Woke up early. Thought, and not only thought but felt, that I can and do love those who have gone astray, the so-called bad people. At first I thought: can one point out to people their errors, sins or guilt without hurting them? Can one extract teeth without pain? There is chloroform and cocaine for physical pain, but not for the soul. This is what I thought at first, but then it occurred to me at once: it’s not true, there is spiritual chloroform for the soul. Just as in everything else, the body has been thought about from every aspect, but people haven’t yet begun to think about the soul. People perform operations on legs and arms with chloroform, but when they perform operations for the moral improvement of a person, they deaden the effect through pain, and through pain they cause the worse illness of bitterness. But there is chloroform for the soul, and it’s been known for a long time – it’s just the same as always: love. […]

The doctors have been. They tried to make clear and definite what is unclear and indefinite. They almost sentenced him to death.23 I went to the Olsufyevs’ with Lyova. After dinner I read Elsmere and the letters and journals that had come. Dunayev came, then Semyonov24 and Annenkova.25 What a religious woman! Slept with the children. Vanya seems better. […]

27 January, Moscow    Got up early, stoked up the stove, and lay in bed thinking. Yes, the whole trouble is being premature, being certain you have done something you haven’t done. It’s true of Christianity generally, and of slavery in particular. They got rid of slaves – papers allowing you to own slaves – but despite that we went on changing our underwear every day, having baths, riding in carriages, having five courses for dinner – we live in ten rooms, etc. – all things which can’t be done without slaves. It’s astonishingly clear, but nobody sees it. […]

30 January, Moscow    Got up very early. The water hadn’t been fetched; I was glad of a bit more work to do. It’s now after 10. I’ll go and have breakfast. Thought of something good when I woke up, but have forgotten it. One thing I thought was that Sonya loves her children with such a morbid passion because they are the one real thing in her life. From loving and caring and making sacrifices for her child, she goes straight to Fet’s jubilee, to a ball which is not only senseless but evil. […]

Had a sleep and went for a walk. After dinner Popov the poet came,26 a young man. I surprised him by saying that his was a most ignoble occupation. Went to Fet’s. Had dinner there. All terribly stupid. Ate and drank a lot and sang. Disgusting. […]

1 February, Moscow    Got up at 8. Worked a lot, wrote up my diary; I’m going for breakfast. Straight after breakfast my stomach began to ache. It ached a lot, but I passed the day no worse than when I’m well. Read Zadig27 – a lot of good things in it. Yes, progress means increasing the amount of light, but the light is always the same. Didn’t go out. Had a sleep, then in the evening Dunayev and Semyonov came. Oh, what a lot of chatter! Then an Englishman,28 a cavalry officer, a lover of horseflesh. An odd person, absolutely English. He has evasive jokes and words ready for every occasion. The League of Peace? ‘The friends of peace fight between themselves.’ On the subject of faith: ‘All people are hypocrites, but I love the Bible, and my beliefs are my own concern and there’s no need to speak about them.’ Then again: ‘I love to squander money, and afterwards I will rough it in Australia.’ ‘The beauty of the body is the soul.’ Whitman told him that. Whitman is his poet. Yes, I wrote four letters yesterday morning to Vasily Ivanovich, Suvorin, Popov and Gay. They’ve been tormenting Masha because of her vegetarianism. It’s astonishing. […]

6 February, Moscow    Got up early again. Very jaded. Did some work. Had a sleep. Thought of a parable apropos of the fact that people who wish to live in Christ’s name want to live together. People want to live in Christ’s name. They are seeds wanting to germinate and bear fruit. To feel sorry for a Christian because he is surrounded by worldly people, people not like himself, is like feeling sorry for a seed because it’s surrounded by earth, and doesn’t hang in space or lie with other seeds. But after all, earth is just what a seed needs in order to get nourishment and sprout. […]

7 February, Moscow    […] Tried to write the foreword29 – couldn’t get on with it. I’m reading Ben Hur.30 Poor.

9 February, Moscow    […] Yes, it’s becoming clear that ‘one must treat words honestly’, i.e. if you speak, you must speak as clearly as you can, and not with artful devices, omissions and insinuations, the way everybody writes, and the way I used to write. I’ll try not to do this. […]

10 February, Moscow    […] Wrote the foreword in rough.31 Went for a walk. After dinner I translated assiduously. O. A. Mamonova and Dunayev came. Read Le sens de la vie.32 There are some astonishing pages about war and the state. I really must write both an appeal and a novel,33 i.e. express my thoughts and surrender myself to the flow of life.

11 February, Moscow    Early. Worked at full stretch, and now I’ve written up my diary and am going for breakfast. Read the delightful Rod. There are some wonderful passages about war and dilettantism. […]

12 February, Moscow    […] Read the Gospels, my own exposition, with Ivin,34 and there was a lot I didn’t like: a lot of unnecessary strained interpretations. It would be good to revise it, but I doubt if I can now. And I doubt if it’s necessary. […]

15 February, Moscow    […] Late. Chopped wood, very tired. Must stop these exertions. Sokolov,35 an ex-revolutionary, came. Then I read She,36 played patience, and another young man came, a shallow man. He wants to be useful, to learn everything, but at the age of eighteen he already knows women. Yes, I did well to tell him that the only way to be of service to people is to be better yourself. […]

20 February, Moscow    Slept badly. Got up later, worked, read Matthew Arnold.37  The foreword. Remarkably similar. Only he has also included the Old Testament in his circle of what he exalts. And that depresses it and brings it down to earth.

In the morning Vasilyev and the manager of the Bible shop came. A book pedlar from Kazan had been arrested at their place for my article ‘on money’.38 The naiveté of the manager’s question why government orders may be repudiated was astonishing. I gave him a good, firm answer. After he had gone I almost felt the necessity to write, and had the first words ready. But I forgot them. It was something like this: I can’t be silent any longer. I must say what I know, what it is that consumes my heart. For I’m old and could die today or tomorrow without having said what God has put it in me to say. […]

23, 24, 25, 26 February, Moscow    On the morning of the 23rd I got up earlier because I was in pain, went to work, but felt worse and worse and spent a whole depressing day in acute pain. […] Read Matthew Arnold, he’s very good with his subtle demarcations, with no loss of clarity; but with the Church of England, the National Society for the Promotion of Goodness39 is an influential factor, and that’s a pity. Why is it necessary for the promotion of goodness to wear gowns and sing certain songs in certain houses? I thought later, but still on the same subject: in real life there are bound to be anomalies and deviations from the ideal, but in one’s thoughts and ideals it’s bad if there are de iations, and if a straight line in one’s imagination is not quite the shortest distance between two points. In the evening Sonya brought a doctor round from Masha’s, Mokrousov. It was wrong of me to be sceptical, as though trying to uphold my reputation. Oh, if only I could forget about what other people will think of me. […]

25 February    Much the same. Better in the morning. Read the same Arnold and The Revue – Princesse Arabe.40 Thought: we have the kingdom of debauchery and women. Women are the moving force in everything. And that is false, and that is why they are so angry in defending their position. Try and encroach on it. There is no subject which makes people more bitter. But uphold it, and all will be forgiven. Somebody brought an article, it’s difficult to say what about; he sympathises with my condemnation of science, condemns the contractual nature of Roman law, but upholds Darwinism and with it tsarist power. I think it’s by Dobrovolsky. What can one do with such muddle-headed people? A letter from Lebedinsky. I must work out a standpoint. Yes, my standpoint is not to bemoan the opinion people have about you. As Epictetus says: Unless you resolve to pass for a fool, you’re a long way from wisdom (philosophy).41 Read Voltaire with Varenka;42 we roared with laughter.

26 February    Better still. But apparently inflammation, fever and pains. In the morning Vsevolozhskaya and someone else came. Read the Duc de Noailles on America.43 The most absurd views, but in connection with Dobrovolsky’s article the description of the injustices of democracy made me think: well, all right, supposing there isn’t a contract, supposing the government won’t defend the laws, what will happen then? People will either endeavour from habit to enforce these laws, or will simply do what they do now and have done in the past, namely uphold by force their own interests, the confirmation of the exclusive ownership (of property), and will think up justifications for it. It will be worse. That’s true. But this injustice on the part of the government which consists in sanctioning duties with regard to the land for one tenth of ten thousand landowners with the same firmness as the duty to perform a promised job of work and so forth, will not become justice. Contracts and property are a lie. But how are we to escape from it? By gradual steps, income tax, the abolition of inheritances and so forth. But one must be aware, I suppose, that this is not what should be, but only an approximation to it. The worst thing is a compromise, accepted as a principle. And this always happens in government affairs.

There can be no political change of the social system. The only change can be a moral one, within men and women. But which way will this change go? Nobody can know for everybody else, but we all know for ourselves. And yet we are all concerned in our world about change for everybody else, only not for ourselves. […]

28 February, Moscow    Got up early, tidied my room wrote up my diary and am going for coffee. Drank too much coffee. Read Leroy-Beaulieu.44 […] Thought yesterday: writing a lot is a disaster. In order to escape from it, one must establish the habit of being ashamed to be published in one’s own lifetime – only after one is dead. How much sediment would settle, and how much pure water would flow! […]

1 March, Moscow    Got up early, weak and jaded. […] Wrote nothing. Read St Paul by Matthew Arnold.45 […] Goltsev came. I dictated to him my theory of art.46  Alcide came. It’s terribly difficult in one’s adult years to understand just how childish young people are. Went to bed at 12.

3 March, Moscow    […] Revised my notes on art – they turned out better. Began to write about Frey47 – no good. Took my notes round to Goltsev and called in at Vera Alexandrovna’s.48 Yes, woman’s kingdom is a disaster. Nobody but women (she and her daughters) can do stupid and dirty things in a clean and even nice manner, and be completely satisfied. And they have no respect for people’s opinions which might cause them to have doubts. […]

4 March, Moscow    Got up later, wrote my diary, no work to do, I’ll go for a stroll. Read M. Arnold. Weak. Sophisms about the Church, which for some reason he needs. Slept. Walked to the Bible shop, it was closed. Many of our people at home. Everything was all right until the arrival of Seryozha with his conversations always on the same theme, critical of everything, despairing and self-justificatory. I spoke to him more heatedly than I should. Lyova makes me sad with his weakness for smoking cigarettes. Ate too much, had stomach-ache. Then Kasatkin, Arkhangelsky, Yanzhul and Trirogova came.49 We had a good talk. Two letters from America. One from Panin,50 a lecture about me, the other with news of a free land movement in Colorado.51 Went to bed very late. [One and a half lines erased.]

6 March, Moscow    […] At home, a whole crowd of people including Fet. I’m more and more at ease with people, I say what I can about God, and what they want me to say about everything else. Fet complained of boredom and of not knowing what is good and bad, what should be done and what shouldn’t. I said: ‘People lived and didn’t know why; Christ explained the law of life – the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth – and gave meaning to each person’s life: taking part in the establishment of the Kingdom of God.’ And it’s all the most precise, clear and practical philosophy. And they call it mysticism. […]

7 March, Moscow    […] A sculptor came to do a model of me for a group,52 then Kasatkin came with my booklet What I Believe, agitated, angry, with tears in his eyes and, as I realised, full of pity for himself and anger with me: ‘Why did you destroy my peace, and tell me what I ought to do and can’t do? You don’t do it yourself. You’re a fraud.’ He actually said to me: ‘It’s a fraud.’ I won’t describe it. I can understand this anger, it’s of the nobly-egoistic, self-admiring kind. I behaved well: I wasn’t embarrassed by the presence of Klodt and tried to mollify him. […]

11 March, Moscow    Yesterday I wrote the foreword;53 it’s reasonably good. Schtange came, I went for a walk with him. […] Then Fet. Vanity, luxury, poetry – it’s all fascinating when it’s full of the energy of youth, but without youth and energy, and with the boredom of old age showing through everything, it’s nasty. Then Obolenskaya came. I didn’t help her, but treated her in an ungodly manner. Then Bogoyavlensky, Bibikov and Yeropkin. Said what I thought about communes, that in order to free oneself from enjoying the right to somebody’s else’s labour, it’s unreasonable and dangerous to collect money (an instrument of oppression), and with that money to buy the most unjust form of property – land. He agreed. We had a good talk. Orfano still wants to refute me.54 I’m glad that I seemed to feel sorry for him. What anxiety and fear. Went to bed late. Slept, thinking about it. Woke up as I was saying to someone: ‘Don’t talk about the need of the poor in a material sense, and of helping them. Need and suffering don’t have material causes. If you want to help, do so only with spiritual gifts, necessary for rich and poor alike. Look at the life of the middle classes. Married men make money by means which are offensive to themselves, with loathing, stress and bitterness, while their wives get through it all inevitably, with discontent, envy of others and bitterness, and it isn’t enough for them, and they console themselves in their imagination with the hope of winning a lottery, if not for two hundred, at least for fifty thousand.’ Read Solovyov’s Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.55 How empty scholars’ discourses are.

Thought: with science, only the importance attached to it is wrong. They, the scientists (professors), do a certain definite and necessary job, they collect, count, compile everything of the same kind. They are, each of them, an information bureau, and their works are reference books. For example, in the 56 everything to do with it has been collected, and it’s useful, but the conclusions are not useful, but stupid. The same is true of Yanzhul, of the mathematician, of Storozhenko. A catalogue raisonné and extracts from books are useful, but their idea that they are increasing knowledge by these compilations, collections and catalogues is a comic delusion. As soon as they leave the field of compilations, they always talk nonsense, and confuse good people.

Read Ruskin all morning. Good on art. Science, he says, knows; art creates. Science asserts the fact; art the manifestations. It’s the other way round. Art has to do with facts, science with external laws. Art says: the sun, light, warmth, light; science says: the sun is 111 times bigger than the earth. I’m going to dinner. […]

14 March, Moscow    Got up early. Worked, read an excellent book on China.57 The Chinese can’t regard us in any other way than as barbarians, madmen, evil and base profit-loving monsters. How edifying such a view is. Revised my thoughts on art again. Read my foreword to Suvorin yesterday. It’s not good at all. Went to Tretyakov’s. A good picture by Yaroshenko – Doves.58

It’s a good picture, but even it, and especially all these 1,000 frames and canvases hung up with such solemnity – what are they for? A sincere man has only to walk through the halls to say for certain that a gross error has been made, and that it’s all wrong and unnecessary. […]

15 March, Moscow    Got up just as early, worked a lot. Read Quental.59

Good. He says that he’s learned that despite all irrefutable proofs (determinism) of the dependence of life on external causes, freedom does exist – but only for a saint. For a saint, the world ceases to be a prison. On the contrary, he (the saint) becomes master of the world because he is its highest interpreter. ‘Only through him does the world know why it exists. Only he accomplishes the purpose of the world.’ Good. I’ll have a sleep.

Had a stomach-ache, lay down before dinner. Hardly had any dinner. A crowd of young ladies came to see Tanya, also Dunayev. I read some nice little things by Chekhov.60 He loves children and women, but that’s not enough. Didn’t go out.

17 March, Moscow    Got up early, chopped wood. Behaved very well towards a petitioner. Sonya is kinder. Lord, help me. Read Chekhov. Not good – insignificant.61 Read Elsner on Penn, Posha on astronomy and Chertkov on the Buddha.62 Very good. It’s dinner now, but I didn’t go. Sat all evening alone, read Chekhov. He has the ability to love as far as artistic insight goes, but as yet no reason to. […]

[20 March] 19 March, Moscow    Got up early, just tidied my room, revised a good article by Dole63 and continued revising my thoughts on art. […]

Yes, also read De la vie64 in French. Seemed very poor – artificial, though not false.

[21 March] 20 March, Moscow    I seem to have lost a day. Today is the 21st. […] Got up and, without dressing, settled down to revise my thoughts on art and sat for three hours scribbling over everything, and I still don’t know whether it’s worth the effort. I think not.65

I’ve just said to Sonya what I’ve wanted to say for a long time, that I can’t sympathise with her over the edition.66 She was very angry and said: ‘You hate me in every way.’ She suffers and causes me pain like a toothache, and I don’t know how to help her, but I’m looking for ways. Help me. […]

23 March, Spasskoye, at Urusov’s    Slept very well, got up at 9, had a talk with Urusov, wrote up my diary and will go for a walk before dinner. Can’t write.

Still the same state of neglect everywhere, the same pharisaical façade – not even a façade but a description of a façade which has nothing in common with reality – and so the reality is totally neglected. (1) The parish church school. Children in the village, a mass of children, children with no work, and unable to read and write. They don’t go to the priest’s – he makes them saw wood and is a bad teacher. (2) Young girls in the factory. ‘Do they marry?’ ‘Not likely – a yoke round the neck!’ (3) Eleven peasants walking in single file. ‘Where are they going?’ ‘They’ve just been taken to the village elder about quit-rent, now they’re being taken to the police station.’ (4) A magnificent inn. It goes without saying that there are schools, and the people pay taxes. Marriages are celebrated, and drunkenness is being eradicated. Urusov is ruining himself by gluttony, alchohol and tobacco. […]

26 March, Spasskoye    Got up early, had a drink of tea and began writing.67 It went quite well. Went for a walk before dinner. After dinner had a sleep and read Paul Ferroll.68 Got an angry letter from Sonya, about the ‘dark people’69 and Masha. […]

27 March, Spasskoye    Couldn’t sleep till 5. Insomnia. Was calm, and said my prayers. Got up at 9. Went for a walk to Zubtsevo and from there to Lychevo and back home. Met Stepan. He agreed to join the Temperance Society, and so did the hay merchant. I explained to Stepan about the factory. Calico is cheap because they don’t count the number of people who perish or die early. If the people at posting stations didn’t count the number of horses which perish, riding would also be cheap. But add people to the cost, even costing them as horses, and you’ll see how much an arshin of calico comes to. The thing is that people sell their lives cheaply, for less than they are worth. They work for fifteen hours. And they leave their machines, bleary-eyed and bemused; and it’s the same every day. […]

28 March, Spasskoye    Woke up at 8. I’m going to have coffee. Did some work, got on with the comedy (bad!). After dinner went to the Novenkoy Factory70 with its 3,000 women workers, ten versts away. […] Drunken, savage people in the inn; 3,000 women, getting up at 4 and leaving work at 8 at night, being corrupted, having their lives shortened and their progeny deformed, live in poverty (in the midst of temptations) in this factory so that calico which nobody needs might be cheap, and Knop might have even more money, when he’s already worried because he doesn’t know what to do with the money he has. The management is being reorganised and improved. What for? So that this destruction of people, and other forms of destruction, might continue successfully and unhindered. It’s astonishing! Came back by sledge, a husband and wife from Spasskoye gave me a lift. Told me about their life: two horses, three cows, tea every day, their own bread. And still they’re dissatisfied. Just as it is in our circle. […]

30 March, Spasskoye    Urusov woke me in the night with a telegram about the arrival of three Americans.71 Couldn’t get to sleep for a long time. Got up at the usual time. Wrote the end of the 3rd act. All very bad. Sat down to dinner; the Americans arrived. Two pastors, one literary man. If only they would spend a dollar buying my books What To Do and Life, and a couple of days reading them, they would get to know me, i.e. what is within me, much better. They drank vodka and smoked. And I couldn’t help feeling sorry for them. Urusov was very nice to them; they stayed till 4. I said a few unnecessary things. Needlessly abused the English very much. For myself, I didn’t say anything new to them, and didn’t hear anything new from them. […]

Spent the whole evening revising my little article on art; didn’t like it at all when I read it to Urusov. Didn’t send it off.

1 April, Spasskoye    Early again. Wrote the 4th act very badly. […] In the evening I read the comedy to Urusov; he laughed loudly, and it seemed to me tolerable. […]

3 April, Spasskoye    Wanted to write something new, but only read through all the things I’ve begun and stopped at The Kreutzer Sonata. I can’t write on the other subject.72 […]

If I’m alive,73 4 April, Spasskoye    Got up early. Began to revise The Kreutzer Sonata. After dinner I walked to the main road. A long way. I’m still timid on my own in a new place. On the way back I stopped on a bridge and stared for a long time. Bad. Urusov’s company is agreeable. Read Shchedrin.74 Good, but old; nothing new. I’m really sorry for him, sorry for his wasted strength.

6 April    […] Got up early. Couldn’t write for a long time, but then began The Kreutzer Sonata again. After dinner I read it to Urusov. Leg a bit painful. Urusov liked it very much. Yes, it’s true that it’s new and powerful.

8 April, Moscow    Alive, in Moscow, but not entirely. [Four words erased] Got up very early, did my packing, said goodbye to Urusov and set off. At the station and on the journey I did propaganda for the temperance society. I only went on foot from the station,75 and then I used skates. Found a boy near the house, a seminarist from Ryazan, who asked me for money and leaned on me with all the weight of his onanistic helplessness. I hurried home and wasn’t able to help him at all. Talked to him and gave him some money which I had on me. It is one of the most difficult situations: a youth who has formed an exaggerated and false idea about me, and has long been obsessed with this idea and with the further one about what he considers his undeserved misfortune, struggles to make his way to me and expects complete salvation; and suddenly there is nothing at all. […]

9 April, Moscow    Got up at 6. Nerves a bit weak, got my letters in order and read them. Read the episode about the defence of the soldier who was executed.76

Badly written, but the episode is awesome in the simplicity of its description – the contrast between the depraved colonel and the officers giving the commands and bandaging his eyes, and the women and the ordinary people celebrating requiem mass and raising money. […]

11 April, Moscow    Got up at 7. Tidied my room and settled down to my article on art.77 […] At home an orgy for twenty-five people. Eating and drinking. Dyakov was nice and gentle, and Fet pathetic and hopelessly bewildered. I got a bit irritated with him when he assured me he didn’t know what ‘immoral’ meant. Kissing the Emperor’s hand; Polonsky wearing a ribbon. Disgusting. Prophets with a key and a ribbon needlessly kissing a person’s hand.78 Did nothing in the evening. Went to bed early. All well and peaceful with Sonya.

15 April, Moscow    […] I’m reading Poëy’s novel:79 the conscious demoralisation is terrible. Consciousness of it is not terrible, but it is overripe; it will have to burst. Repin’s picture is impossible – it’s all invented. Gay’s is very good.80 […]

18 April, Moscow    […] A pile of letters, which I’ll read after dinner. Taneyev81  interrupted me. Read him my article on art. He’s a completely ignorant man who has adopted an aesthetic outlook that was new thirty years ago, and imagines that he is in possession of the last word in human wisdom. For example: sensuality is good. Christianity is Catholic dogma and ritual, and therefore stupid. The Greek outlook on the world is the most elevated, and so on. Gorbunov82 came. And I couldn’t talk with him. Taneyev gets on my nerves. Went to bed late.

19 April, Moscow    […] Yes, in the morning a Jew from Tver83 came, and on the pretext of his noble behaviour towards the woman he was living with, asked for my help. For three months now he’s been pursuing me with letters and now he turns up himself, beaming and smiling. I spoke to him irritably. I deserve indulgence (if there can be any for it), for the pain in my liver which has been coming on. Read the charming legend of Ormuzd and Ariman84 (fictitious). After dinner I began reading. The pain started and it was very painful until 11. Put up with it reasonably well. How strange that when one is in pain, it’s harder to pray and prepare for death than when one isn’t. Read World Advance Thought and Universal Republic. A new world outlook and movement is growing up in the world, and seems to require me to take part in it and proclaim it. It’s as if I had been made what I am, with my reputation, specially for this purpose – made to be a bell. […]

20 April, Moscow    Got up at 8. Tried to write about art and am convinced that I’m wasting my time. I must give it up, especially since Obolensky85 writes and says he’s prepared to wait. I can’t write because it’s not clear. When it is clear, I’ll write at once. I was deceiving myself that it was clear. I seemed to be writing out of pique, and not for the sake of the thing. It’s now 3. Solovyov86 has arrived.

Had a worthless talk with him, and went to Nelidova’s.87 A repulsive woman, tightly corseted, laced up, fat and seemingly naked. A writer. I behaved reasonably well. Came away. After dinner I went out immediately, took the manuscript88 to Gubkina and The Week to Dmokhovskaya. Met Ozmidov. He was on his way to me with four points: (1) that if you want to do something wrong you must do it – otherwise its pharisaism. Incomprehensible nonsense, if one didn’t know that he needs this theory to justify his smoking and his revolver, i.e. to think that when he’s doing something wrong he’s doing what he ought to do; (2) that it was unfair of me to say that if a man needs money, it doesn’t mean that he needs money, but it means that he needs to remedy the false situation he finds himself in. An incomprehensible misunderstanding, if one didn’t know that he needs to misunderstand it, so as not to have to consider his own situation irregular; (3) that I was wrong to say that the solution of economic difficulties for the individual consists in his being necessary; also an incomprehensible objection, if one didn’t know that he considers himself necessary to people, despite the fact that people don’t understand their need. Finally, (4) a point already made in his book as well; at this fourth point I was so clearly convinced that all these apparent explanations of misunderstandings were nothing else but mental subtleties for justifying his own position (for satisfying himself, regardless of making progress), that I stopped objecting and felt truly sorry for him. I think that this silence of mine might have had a more useful effect on him than my objections. The fourth point was that a man may kill himself. ‘May a man kill himself?’ he asked. ‘I think not,’ I replied. ‘But what about when I put myself in someone’s place, in order to protect him?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, wondering what could be the reason for this lofty self-sacrifice. ‘And therefore, morphine is all right too?’ I realised that he was trying to explain that he took morphine, which he injects himself with and which is his weakness, in order to be able to work and to feed his family, and that consequently he is killing himself for the sake of other people. Never before had the distortion of people’s judgements for the purpose of justifying themselves and saving themselves from remorse, and therefore from making progress, been so clear to me. It’s moral morphine. All fanatics, all theoreticians are like that. Yes, this is what one needs to write on one’s fingernail: don’t argue with such people. Arguing with such people is a terrible fraud, like a naked man fighting someone clad in armour (not a good comparison). Went to bed after 11.

22 April, Moscow    Work at 6, got up at 8. Read Noyes89 on the communities. Reading about the Shakers90 one is horrified at the deadly uniformity and superstitions; dances and invisible callers and gifts – spectacles, fruit, etc. Thought: withdrawing to a community, setting up a community, keeping it clean – all this is sinful and wrong. An individual or individuals can’t keep themselves clean on their own; to be clean they must be together; to isolate oneself in order not to get dirty is the greatest dirtiness, like the cleanliness of ladies for which the labour of other people is responsible. It’s just like cleaning or digging at the edge, where it’s clean already. No, the person who wants to work must clamber right into the middle where the dirt is, or if he doesn’t do that, then at least he mustn’t try to escape from the middle if he should find himself there. […]

23 April, Moscow    Got up very early. Tired. Didn’t even try to write. Read about Saint-Simonism, Fourierism and the communities,91 and didn’t go out anywhere. Thought: it’s terrible to think what a desolate state the world is in, and how the activity of the best representatives of mankind is paralysed in it by the organisations of the Church, the state, pedagogical science, art, the press, monasteries and communities: all the forces which might have served mankind as an example and a direct challenge are put in the exceptional position in which the simple life, and abstention from vice, weaknesses, follies and luxury becomes optional, pardonable and even necessary (a bishop, a minister, a scholar is bound to have servants, a digestible dinner, a glass of wine) and nobody is left to do the simple direct work of life. It’s good that the Church, the state, science, literature and art don’t claim everybody, and there are still the rank and file people left. But nevertheless this defection from life’s work of the people with the best powers is ruinous. St Simon says: ‘What if the 3,000 best scholars were destroyed?’ He thinks that everything would then perish. I don’t think so. More serious is the destruction or elimination of the best people morally. This is actually going on. And still the world hasn’t perished. But it would be good to be able to explain this.

After dinner, during which I was in a bad mood and kept silent, I walked to Dmokhovskaya’s. Called in to see Zlatovratsky. There was a factory worker there who writes. I tried to persuade him to give up writing, and alcohol too. The former is more harmful. Had a pain in the pit of my stomach. Poor Tanya came. I was very sorry for her.

25 April, Moscow    Got up late. Wrote not too badly about art. Posha came. I told him that he must wait.92 He was distressed; but for a Christian everything is clear and good. Took some books round to Yanzhul and to the museum. At home they are expecting relatives. Talk about Seryozha’s wedding. All stupid, meaningless and malevolent. […]

Masha has come. I have a great feeling of tenderness for her. For her only. She makes up, as it were, for all the rest. […]

26 April, Moscow    […] Posha and Masha at home. What is the meaning of my attitude to Posha, which is by no means a joyful one? I love and esteem him; but is there not a father’s jealousy here? Masha is certainly very dear to me. […]

28 April, Moscow    Got up at 8. Sat in Tanya’s room first of all to write about art, then Grot came. Read it to him. So it’s not bad. Read Grot’s article on ‘feeling’.93  Terrible rubbish: no content, no clarity, no sincerity. A gentleman is the left-overs of a Christian. Wash the dish where a Christian has been and you’re left with a gentleman. Thought [two lines erased]. Again one may be mistaken about the harm and ruin to one’s life of one’s own egoism, but it’s apparent in the family egoism; because of the intoxication of vanity one may not see, for example, the harm done to oneself by one’s own egoism; but all the harm is apparent in one’s wife and children, the object of one’s vanity. It’s the same with wealth and any indulgence of one’s own personality or one’s family’s. A mother loves her children, but does them harm. Therefore it isn’t love, but infatuation. […]

29 April, Moscow    Got up later. Decided not to revise in future, but to write straight out. It’s possible, but I’ll have to work out methods which I don’t have yet: namely to think out the theses of my arguments more clearly and then enlarge on them.

Tried to write this way about art, but couldn’t. Got tangled up again. […]

30 April, Moscow    Got up at 8. Wrote nothing, only looked through what I wrote yesterday. Went to see the soldiers.94 A fraud was being perpetrated on those conscripted in autumn. They were made to take the oath in front of the standard. Priests in chasubles were singing with choristers in smart surplices, icons were carried, drums were beaten and a band was playing. On my way back I heard a sergeant-major saying, ‘It’s forbidden.’ What a terrible word! For it didn’t refer to the word of God, but to the senselessly cruel and absurd military regulations. Thought: here are seven points of an indictment against the government. (1) The Church, fraudulent superstitions, waste. (2) The army, dissipation, cruelty, waste. (3) Punishment, corruption, cruelty, infection. (4) Large-scale landownership, hatred of the urban poor. (5) Factories – the killing of life. (6) Drunkenness. (7) Prostitution.

As I got near the troops, the priests with the icons came towards me. I walked away from them so as not to have to take off my cap. I felt conscience-stricken at running away, but was afraid and ashamed to walk towards them. Returned home, read and wrote this up. Decided to write theses, i.e. brief propositions, about art. […]

2 May, Moscow    Got up at 6, got ready for the journey95 quickly and cheerfully, but wasn’t in a good frame of mind. Popov came at 10 and we drove out beyond the town gates. Walked to Syrov, four versts this side of Podolsk, and spent the night there. Had tea on the way. The husband was drinking, the wife working, and an eight-year-old girl was washing the floors and making cigarettes for a rouble a week. They paid twenty copecks for glass when I was there. Walking with Popov was pleasant and easy.

5 May, on the road (Bogucharovo village?)    Everywhere the scourge of alcohol: we read from The Distiller.96 A woman from Voronezh wanted to buy the book from me – a remedy against a drunken husband. The cold is terrible. We’re frozen and I even began to be afraid. We had a rest opposite the police station, without going in, and then in an inn. A father with his young girls. I gave them some books. Got as far as Bogoroditsk, thirty-four versts from Tula, for the night. A lot of people: an old and young soldier, women, young metal-workers. I talked about war. They understood. Slept well. We’ll go on further.

6 May, on the road    Walked briskly without stopping for sixteen versts. Had dinner in the inn at Seryukovka, where I exhorted them earnestly about drunkenness. A kind old inn-keeper, his wife and son. The church clerk, a smart young lad, was drinking and reading, and gave me five copecks for my book – Time to come to our senses. An ex-sergeant-major who had seen better days came with us. Got as far as Tula. […]

10 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Woke up later, that’s a weakness too. Began to write about art – couldn’t get on. Went into the woods with my notebook. Tried to express my ideas in theses – couldn’t formulate them clearly. […] The cutting down of oak trees is an unpleasant business. I don’t know what to do. […]

13 May, Protasovo.    Still alive. Got up at 4, got ready, said goodbye to Popov and drove to Kozlovka where I wasted about an hour. The journey would have been pleasant had it not been for an importunate lady of a Jewish type who recognised me and tried to do all sorts of things to me. Eventually I got into conversation with her brother-in-law, a merchant, on the uselessness and harmfulness of money. Not bad. Set off in the heat of the day and was exhausted. Got to the house and dear Masha ran out to meet me, always ready to do a kind deed, and – just as ready – his Sonya,98 a wonderful mother. Ilya is much inferior to her, as a man. He buries himself in trifles, and then there’s his luxurious living and lack of any spiritual life. He is a kind man, but very weak. […]

14 May, Protasovo (and Yasnaya Polyana)    Got up very early, went for a walk through the woods. Wrote down my thoughts about Ilyusha.99 I wanted to pray for him and show him the error of his ways, and sought an opportunity all day but didn’t find one. Spoke in snatches; it was difficult. The main thing is he doesn’t want to listen and won’t listen. I’m still reading Uspensky.100 One thing, Doing one’s own Job is reasonable, the rest is impossibly bad.

Then I read What Men Live By to the Sidorovka children in the meadows. That was the best thing. Set off at 6. Tried to talk on the journey.101 The main thing is he’s completely unhappy. Just as for a spider it seems like rain as soon as there is any sign of dampness, so for me he’s already as unhappy as he will be in twenty years’ time. In the compartment a priest’s daughter recognised me and told me about the Maltsov factory which has gone over to the artel principle, and the Pesochny factory which is planning to do the same. Masha is worth a lot; serious, clever and kind. People reproach her for not having any exclusive attachments. But it’s this that shows her true love. She loves everyone and makes everyone love her – not just as much as, but even more than people who love their own family exclusively. […]

16 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Got up at 8. Going round in circles again about art. It must be far too important and mysterious a subject … […]

18 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up later. Gorbunov is here. I was glad to see him. Then got on with The Kreutzer Sonata on chastity – not bad. Peasants from Kozlovka came to fetch some booklets. They were already drunk before 2 o’clock. Walked to Kozlovka with Gorbunov. He’s too ready to agree. He’s very young at heart. It’s depressing at home. A great moral decline in all of them. Tiredness and an awareness of being in the wrong. Went to bed late.

20 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Walked with Gorbunov and talked about art and made notes and, I think, got things a bit clearer. I feel very weak. Read Lecky102 on the aesthetic development of art … Yes, art, in order to be respected, must bring forth good. And to know what is good, one must have a world outlook, a belief. The good is a sign of true art. The signs of art in general are that it says something new, clear and sincere. The sign of true art is a new, clear and sincere good. […]

23 May,    Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday it was very depressing to hear Sonya’s complaints about the work to do with the estates. She has bought more and more,103  poor woman, without knowing why, and doesn’t know what to do. Got up very late and went to cut beams for a Yasnaya peasant. It was very pleasant. […]

25 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Early. An undefined quantity of food does harm, I think. I must have two cups of tea and nothing more. Dreamed that I was conscripted into the army and obeyed the rules for dress, reveillé, etc., but felt that before long I should be required to take the oath and would refuse, and I thought there and then that I would have to refuse to do drill as well. An inner struggle followed: a struggle in which conscience got the upper hand.

In the morning I got down to writing an appeal in my notebook.104 I feel I haven’t long to live, and I think there’s a lot that still needs to be said. But I haven’t the health, or the mental energy. […] Tanya. I did wrong in objecting even to Misha Islavin.105 […]

27 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early. Still have a pain in the pit of my stomach. Read Russian Thought.106 Budget.107 All sorts of nonsense. Walked to the village. Semyon Rezunov told me a wonderful proverb apropos of my agreement not to swear and not to drink: ‘The man who gets weaker is weaker than water; the man who gets stronger is stronger than stone.’ Both an intimidating and an encouraging proverb. […] In the evening the rather boring Tolstaya.108 But I had a good long talk about chastity. Went to bed late.

28 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Health worse. Went for a walk in the morning. Read about Jean Paul Richter.109 The purity of his morals and his Platonism are astonishing. His sayings are also excellent. He is the best sort of writer. On a par with the egoist Goethe. A good story about a father who brought his children up under the ground. They had to die in order to come out into the light. And they terribly wanted to die. I must follow it up when I’ve read some Jean Paul. […]

29 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] In the morning I talked to Tolstaya about faith: it seems strange, but it’s impossible to say anything else except that the Graeco-Russian faith is one of the most superstitious and harmful heresies. As I was walking through the wood, where I chased and pitilessly dispatched a wounded hare, I thought how innocent murderers must be. They think about something else, and kill without a struggle. But we must come to our senses. How good a story one could write about a murderer who repented of the murder of a woman who wouldn’t defend herself.110 There’s so much I want and need to write, and I haven’t the strength.

31 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Strakhov brought The Net of Faith,111 and spoke again about Gottfried Arnold.112 In his History of Heresy he acknowledges that heresies contain an aspect of the truth. […]

1 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, went to talk to Vasily Yakovlevich about the estate, and explained the Lord’s Prayer to Masha’s schoolchildren. Read Le peuple d’Israel.113 […]

6 June, Yasnaya Polyana    A young monk and an actor came begging; I gave them some money and booklets – pathetic people. Then a young student from Kiev. He said he was nervously distraught and wanted to live according to Christ’s law. Rather like Bronevsky.114 Had a frank talk with him. […]

One man is no better than another man, just as a place in one river is no deeper or cleaner than a place in another. Man is in flux, like a river. And a man between fifteen and sixteen years of age, and another between twenty-five and thirty, and a third between forty and fifty and a fourth between the 4th and 5th hours of the last day of his life, etc. – are all incommensurable quantities. And you can’t say: this one is better or worse. […]

7 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Read New Christianity.115 Wonderful thoughts – which gladden and stimulate – about what is very close at hand. I must copy down and collect everything that strikes me along two lines of thought: (1) the act of indictment116 and (2) the coming of the Kingdom of God. […] Lyova came. Not a bad lad. He could turn out very well. There’s a long way to go yet. […]

11 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] A German newspaper, anti-drink and vegetarian, with my article in. I was pleased. Received some books: Whitman, some stupid poems, and De Quincey.117 Went to bed late. Oppressed very much by life.

15 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: Aren’t the bad feelings children have for their parents due to the contempt they feel for their parents because of their sensuality? They feel it somehow. Verochka K.118 hates her parents. A terrible example of the vanity of science and art are the arguments about Darwinism (and indeed much else) and Wagnerism. But the high priests of science and art can’t wait for a solution, but have already resolved that the common people must serve them. A theatre magnate has bought an estate, and the peasants fall at his feet. […]

Today I read an excellent adaptation of L’homme qui rit119 and thought: people always describe how heroes give up their lives for others, but it’s all nonsense. You need to give up your job like Semyonov’s yardman120 or, more difficult still, give up porridge when you’re hungry.

Meanwhile I seem to have got things clearer with my writing. I must think it out now, and not correct it later. […] That’s what I’ve done now with On Art. Also The Kreutzer Sonata and Alcohol.121 […]

16 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Behaved quite well with Sonya; reconciled her and Tanya. The main thing is, she seems to be beginning to understand that I need peace and love. […]

20 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Read Adin Ballou’s Non-resistance.122 Gave it to Lyova to translate. Excellent. […]

23 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Over dinner I took offence at Sonya for pestering me about food. Thank God I went to apologise immediately after dinner. An example of female reasoning: I. ‘What wonderful articles about non-resistance.’ She. ‘Yes, but it’s all talk. Everyone knows it and no one does it, because it doesn’t pay.’ I. ‘That’s because people don’t drum it in.’ She. ‘However much you drum it in, they won’t do it.’ I. ‘Why not, if it’s drummed in in the same way as, say, the holiness of the sacrament? After all no one would spit out the sacrament, even under threat of execution.’ She. ‘Yes, but that’s nothing, it’s easy, any one can do it; but the other thing isn’t.’ I (perplexed). ‘But I said that despite the fact that it’s nothing, people still won’t do it. You don’t understand.’ She. ‘What is there to understand? I understand already what you’re going to say next. You just keep on and on about the same old thing.’

25 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought later about a story of a man who spends all his life searching for the good life in science, in the family, in a monastery, in hard work, in yurodstvo – and who dies in the consciousness of a ruined, empty, unsuccessful life. Yet he is really a saint.123 […]

28 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Saw Feinermann124 off. He’s young, and not exactly a revolutionary, but the socialist ideal stifles everything else in him. […]

29 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’m ready to die. Dreamed in the night of a frog as big as a man, and was terrified. It seemed to be death I was terrified of. But no, it was terror pure and simple.

1 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Hardly slept at all. Very weak. Looking Backward125 is excellent. Only one thing is bad: the socialist, Marxist idea that if you do something that’s wrong for a very long time, it will come right of itself. Capital is concentrated in a small number of hands; eventually it will be concentrated in one. Workers’ unions will also merge into one. And capital and the labour force will be separated. Then the power of the state or revolution will unite them, and all will be well. And the main thing is that our civilisation will in no way be curtailed or be put into reverse: there will be the same palaces, gastronomical dinners, sweetmeats, wines, carriages, horses – only everything will be available to everyone. What is incomprehensible is that they don’t see that this is impossible. Just take the luxury of the Yasnaya Polyana house and share it among the peasants. It can’t be done. It wouldn’t be any use. (One must give up luxury.) While oppression exists, the force of capital and inventive genius is not being directed to where it is needed. For that to happen, the masses must be able to try everything themselves. But the main thing is for us to be prepared to give up all the refinements of our civilisation, simply in order to get rid of the cruel inequality which is our curse. If it’s true that I love my brother, I don’t think twice about depriving myself of my drawing-room in order to give him shelter if he is homeless. But as it is, we say that we want to give shelter to our brother, but only on condition that our drawing-room remains free for receiving guests. We must decide who to serve – God or mammon. We can’t serve both. If God, then we must give up luxury and civilisation, and be prepared to rebuild it tomorrow, only for all people equally.

2 July, Yasnaya Polyana    A bit better. The Hapgoods have left.126 I walked to the village and the haymaking. Nothing is going well. Everyone is quarrelling. Got on with The Kreutzer Sonata. Not bad. Finished it all. But now I must revise it all from the beginning. Forbidding her to have children must be made the central point. Without children she is reduced to a state where she is bound to fall. More about the mother’s egoism. The mother’s self-sacrifice is neither good nor bad, just like work. Both are good only when there is understanding and love. But work for oneself and self-sacrifice exclusively for one’s children are bad. Went to bed early.

4 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up at 6. Mowed, it’s now 11.30, I’m tired. This morning and yesterday evening I thought hard and clearly about The Kreutzer Sonata. Sonya is copying it out; she’s upset, and she talked last night about the disillusionment of a young woman, the sensuality of men, alien to her at first, and the lack of sympathy for children. She’s unfair because she wants to justify herself, but in order to understand and speak the truth it’s necessary to repent. The whole drama of the story, which I haven’t been successful with all this time, is now clear in my head. He cultivated her sensuality. The doctors forbade her to have children. She is well fed, and well dressed, and there are all the temptations of art. How can she help falling? He must feel that he himself brought her to it, that he had already killed her before when he hated her, and that he was only looking for a pretext and was glad of it.

Yes, yesterday the peasants asserted that it’s only women, not girls, who get hysterics. Therefore it’s correct that it’s the result of sexual excess. […]

6 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up very early and walked to Prudishche meadow. Did some mowing there with Fomich and Andrey. Came home for breakfast. More mowing. Vanya is still ill at home. Went to sleep. Was woken up by Ilya and Treskin. A conversation over breakfast about the person who says and doesn’t do. What a muddle! A person like Sonya says: ‘Others say, but don’t do. But I don’t say and don’t do. That’s more honest.’ ‘What nonsense! Do you know what to do?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Well in that case it’s better to say so. Saying at least something imposes an obligation.’ Sverbeyev came to dinner. I argued with him about the temperance society. Very tired, stooked the hay. […]

7 July    […] Thought: for The Kreutzer Sonata. (1) The differing moods of the wife – she is two women. (2) The seducer-musician considers it his duty to seduce. And besides: I won’t go to the brothel, I may get infected there. I was struck again – I can’t remember everything – by Prokofy’s sense of delicacy,127 and thought: intelligence and talents are not given to everyone in equal measure, but the understanding of people’s feelings, smiles and frowns is given to all, to those of limited intelligence and to children more than to others.

8 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] There’s a lot I want to write. Thought for the comedy. One of the peasants is a wit.128

11 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Didn’t get up early because of the rain. Set off at 7. They were already mowing. Sharpened Rugin’s scythe and spent all day mowing energetically. Finished all the mowing. Enjoyed it. Dyakov came, and before him Urusov. Urusov is still doing his calculations. It’s only possible with the aid of tobacco. Obviously he doesn’t need anything except to exercise his powers. But he’s lost a proper application for them. We stopped for lunch and I offered Stepan, who had finished eating and already crossed himself, a potato and butter. He refused, saying that he’d had enough, and that to eat immoderately is a sin. If only everyone knew that! Went to bed at 11 and today is 12 July. Got up at 8 and saw Dyakov off. A letter from Feinermann which Sonya read and which distressed her very much. He writes about my cross and foresees the torture I will suffer living in conditions which are offensive to me and which I want to, but hesitate to break out of. Offensive, yes, but there’s no hesitation about breaking out, because I know that they are like illness, old age or death, the favourable conditions of my life, and so their offensiveness isn’t painful, but a cross whose importance he doesn’t understand. A cross means something unpleasant, painful, heavy, being carried as something necessary and inevitable sent from God, and for that very reason not unpleasant, not painful, not heavy, but something without which it would be unpleasant, uncomfortable and unnatural. It’s like having a weight on your back say of a pood, which you didn’t expect and didn’t consider necessary (that really is a torment) or carrying a sack containing a pood of flour which will be food for yourself and your children. […]

15 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] They struck up the same everlasting conversation about the estate again – despondent, despairing and censuring one another and everybody else. I tried to tell them that the solution was not at the other end of the world, but here under their noses, and that they must work to find it, try it out and then pass judgement. Lyova began to argue. It began with the orchard. They argued obstinately and rudely, saying: ‘It’s impossible to talk to you, you get angry at once’, and so on. I was very hurt. Of course Sonya attacked me at once, harrowing my tormented heart. It was very painful. Sat up till one and went to bed ill.

16 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: what an astonishing thing – lack of respect by children for their parents and elders in all classes of society has become an epidemic! It’s an important sign of the times: respect and obedience from fear is finished, it’s had its day, and freedom has appeared. And on the basis of freedom one ought to cultivate living relationships, which include everything that fear was responsible for, but without fear. With me it’s only so with Masha. I’m afraid to say and write this. […]

18 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Received some letters and a newspaper cutting: ‘The world has of Tolstoy as much as it can digest.’129 It’s flattering. The bad thing is that people pay attention to it. […]

21 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] After dinner Sonya declared that she had been faithful and was lonely. I said: ‘one must always be calm, gentle and considerate’. I couldn’t say anything more. And I regret it. […]

22 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Useless chatter in the morning – they wouldn’t let me work. After breakfast I went mowing. Everything had already been gathered in, only the blind man’s strip was left. I mowed it till dinner. Dinner at the Kuzminskys’, sad and disgusting gluttony. How pathetic they are. I can’t help them. However, were I to go out begging, I could help them even less than now. Sonya locked up Bulka who had bitten the dogs, and this led to an insoluble muddle: let her out? Keep her locked up? Kill her? Le non agir. Lao-Tzu. In the evening I played bat and ball, and was bored.

24 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up at 9. Received from Strakhov Arnold’s books from the year 1720,130 a true history of the Church. What an awful lot of scholarly, mental work. If only there could be a single compilation of all that is right and true; but nobody makes one. The Stakhoviches came back and prevented me from working. I began on The Kreutzer Sonata.

Thought: (1) I’m writing The Kreutzer Sonata and even On Art, and both are negative and evil, and I want to write something good; and (2) in ancient times the Greeks had only the one ideal of beauty. But Christianity, in proclaiming the ideal of the good, has removed or displaced that other ideal, and made of it a condition of the good. Is that true? I feel that in the confrontation, in the substitution of one of these ideals by the other, lies the whole history of aesthetics, but how it is I can’t think properly. Our way of life and my ill health prevent me from thinking. […]

Slept during the day. Worked a bit on The Kreutzer Sonata. Finished it in rough. I realise now how I must reorganise it all, bringing in love and compassion for her.

27 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up before 8, went for a bathe, had some good thoughts, namely: it was a great good fortune for Masha that her mother didn’t love her. Tanya not only didn’t have the incentive to seek the good along the path I indicated, but she was led astray directly by love and over-indulgence. […]

Agriculture, which is replacing the nomadic conditions I experienced in Samara, is the first step towards wealth, luxury, dissipation and suffering. It’s obvious from the first step. We must make a conscious effort to return to the simple tastes of that time. That was the childlike innocence of the world. A story of the Samara emigration would be a good thing.131 Wrote a bit of The Kreutzer Sonata. Went mushrooming, got back late. After dinner I read the papers. The socialists demand state interference in matters of working hours and improved pay, and in the working conditions of women and children, etc. – i.e. they demand privileges for the working class and restrictions like entailed estates. And they don’t think that the state can’t prevent people from selling themselves. People must understand that you can’t buy and sell people. And for that one needs freedom from government interference, and, above all, the freedom that abstinence gives. Nobody speaks about that. Urusov eats a terrible amount. A dreadful example. Went to bed late, slept badly.

28 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up before 8, went for a bathe, got on with The Kreutzer Sonata before breakfast; I’m now feeling sleepy and want to work well. Went mushrooming. A sort of quiet joy. It’s so good. A feeling of happiness. Only a little something is missing. In the evening I played chess with Tanya. Slept badly all night, dreamed, felt and thought in my dreams that one must maintain a loving attitude towards people: I kept dreaming of the various situations in which I had renounced a loving attitude, and had tried to reform. It makes me very glad; it means I’m really aware of this and am beginning to introduce it into my life. I’ve actually been living like this.

30 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Lyova looked at me and said: ‘Mushrooming – that’s hunting too. One feels sorry for the little mushrooms too, just as one does for the snipe; there’s only a little difference.’ I kept silent and then thought: yes, a little difference; but just as Bryullov, when asked how it was that in improving his picture he only changed a little bit but the result was quite different, replied that art is only a matter of ‘the little bit’,132 so one can say with even greater justice that the good life begins where the little bit begins.

Got on with The Kreutzer Sonata better than on any other day. Then went to Osip’s to mow. Mowed till 5. Had dinner, fell asleep. And now it’s 9; I’m awake and writing. Sonya woke me up. I talked to her reluctantly. Doubts have arisen why Masha has gone to Grumant for the second day running.133 I must tell her. Tomorrow, if I’m alive.

31 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] At home read Keats,134 the English poet. […]

1 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late, went for a bathe. Made some notes for The Kreutzer Sonata. At home I wanted to settle down to my comedy, but was disgusted and ashamed. Unwell. Rain. Hardly went out at all. Before I knew where

I was, I was caught up in the idle occupation of chess – problems and playing. Still thinking about art and reading about it. Received a letter from Strakhov full of subtle flattery. As the Buddha rightly said, there are ten sins: three bodily, four verbal and three mental. The first three are murder, theft (I would say the appropriation of property) and lust (fornication); the four verbal ones: equivocation,135 slander, lying and flattery; and the three mental ones: envy, anger and deceit (delusion). Received World Advance Thought again and, as always, experienced a great spiritual élan. Some wonderful thoughts, for example: death is the awakening from the delusion of the reality of material life. I must write to them. Without fail. Also received a letter from Alyokhin with the news that they had been searched and that all my writings and their letters have been confiscated.136

2 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] At breakfast I lost my temper with Lyova. Mutual animosity leapt forth like a wild animal that had broken loose from its chain. I was very sad and ashamed. Why didn’t I remember that I wanted his humiliation? Consoled myself with the fact that it’s just that humiliation that I need. […]

6 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: what if there should be another child? How ashamed I should be, especially before the children. They will reckon up when it was, and will read what I’m writing. And I felt ashamed and sad. And then I thought: there’s no need to be afraid before people, but only before God. I asked myself how I stood in this respect before God, and at once felt more at ease. […]

7 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Went down to empty the chamber pot – a Polish lawyer was there, wanting to see the famous man. I found it very unpleasant that I couldn’t get through to the man in him. […]

August 9, Yasnaya Polyana    Saw off Urusov and Lyova. I’ve become very weak. Shameful indulgence over food. Read Plato on art and thought about art. Plato connects beauty and goodness together – that’s wrong. In The Republic he speaks of the immorality or amorality of poets and so rejects them. At that time, as at present, poets were below Plato’s level and were a diversion. I feel that something is missing in my thoughts about art, and that I’ll find what it is that’s missing. […]

11 August, Yasnaya Polyana      […] The Kreutzer Sonata – I must make the dying woman delirious, as she begs for forgiveness and can’t believe that it was he who had killed her.137 […]

16 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Did nothing all day except read Schopenhauer on art.138 What flippancy and what trash. Yet someone assured me that his is the prevailing theory of aesthetics. […]

18 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Thought about military service; I must write about this.139 […]

19 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Went out to look at the sowing, and after breakfast set off with Zolotaryov to help them sow. Very tired. […]

Thought of something for The Kreutzer Sonata. ‘Fornicator’ is not a term of abuse, but rather denotes a condition (the same is true of a woman fornicator, I think) – a condition of restlessness, curiosity and the need for novelty which comes from intercourse for the sake of pleasure, not with one person but with many. Likewise ‘drunkard’. One can try to abstain, but a drunkard remains a drunkard and a fornicator a fornicator – at the first lapse of concentration he falls. I am a fornicator.

22 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yes, about art. (1) The world is crammed full of people’s works and pursuits, which lay claim to importance under the banner of scientific and artistic activity. Enormous demands are made on people, and their activity often borders on madness and corruption; in science – classicism, realism, Darwinism, hypnotism, bacteria; in art – corrupt pictures, statues, theatres, ballets, romances, songs, etc. Wagner’s operas. It is necessary to examine and investigate the justice of the demands made to respect them by the people engaged in these activities.

What is the explanation for these activities? Science furthers the progress of mankind, contributes to its wellbeing. Art leads to mankind’s awareness of itself. This is the common, universal explanation. It can be found, not in the writings of aestheticism, but in public opinion. It is completely wrong in respect of modern science: material wellbeing comes about by practice, not theory, while the wellbeing of the spiritual life is almost negated by it. And making mankind aware of itself is quite unnecessary. Well then, is it all nonsense and deception? Comparison with the Church. Public prayer to the Kazan mother of God in the Christian Church. Is all Christianity nonsense because of this? No, but you get degeneration, deviation and distortion. And it’s just the same with science and art. Let’s see what it amounts to. It is the transmission by people to one another of their own inner content. The transmission of inner content for the sake of unity is a most important and sacred thing. The important thing about transmission is to transmit the good – an indication of what leads to unity. In reality there are no divisions into science and art; there are two sorts of transmission.

The characteristic of the first sort is logical argument, of the second – the effect on the faculty of imitation (yawning).

Now the transmission by the one means or the other of what is necessary for unity is the important thing, and this transmission is only achieved by observing three conditions: that what is transmitted should be new, beautifully clear and truthful. It always has been so and always will be. This always used to be the business of religion; but all things are abused, and now we have the transmission, not of what is important or necessary, but only of the new, the beautiful and the truthful, and we have pseudo-science and pseudo-art, in whose province lie utterly false science and false art, which don’t observe even these three conditions. It isn’t new, or it isn’t clear (beautiful) or it isn’t truthful. But there are some people who observe all three, but don’t transmit what is important – the sophists in science and the sophists, or rather the aesthetes in art, and you get the well-to-do classes amusing themselves with pseudo-science and pseudo-art. Science for science’s sake, art for art’s sake. Petrushka reading Gogol just for the sake of reading. And the dogma that every discovery of science is good for some purpose, and that every manifestation of art produces some good. Theories are artificially contrived in support. Schopenhauer’s theory and Comte’s theory for the sciences.

What should be done then? It is important to transmit by the one means or the other only what contributes to true wellbeing, what leads to unity – that is what is important. But to amuse oneself with knowledge without knowing what for, in the way Petrushka amuses himself with a book just for the sake of reading, or to amuse oneself with art, is nasty and harmful. Dixi [I have spoken]. […]

In the evening Sonya talked to Nikolay Nikolayevich about Posha and Masha140  and about life as usual. She doesn’t need to persuade others, but in opposing the arguments of the person she is talking to, to persuade herself and herself only, that she is right. When you know and see this clearly, how can you argue? Then Vanya went down with suspected croup. How terribly pathetic she was! The whole of her life, a good life, is concentrated in and on him. And she has cut herself off from the possibility of any other good life (with the youngsters it’s no longer the same – or I doubt it), and that’s why she’s so frightened. An example of women’s conversation: I was talking about the wrongness of the fact that public opinion approves of intense grief at the loss of children. Women don’t understand. They say: ‘How is it you wish to object to the natural feeling of grief?’ I say: ‘In war it’s natural to be afraid, but since it’s considered shameful to be afraid, people aren’t afraid, and that’s what I would like; I would like public opinion to be the same with regard to children.’ ‘No,’ says Menshikova, ‘one can’t help feeling sorry; even if your son is killed in war – you still feel sorry.’ And this is the way we usually argue with women and young people. They simply don’t understand, or worse than not understanding, they don’t understand and pretend that they do. […]

23 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] At dinner I couldn’t restrain myself when Sonya began to compare me with her father with regard to fastidiousness about food. […]

27 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. My own fault. Read the American paper Dawn which was sent to me yesterday, and The Nationalist – both papers which support Christian socialism. Their programmes: nationalisation of industry and the establishment of the brotherhood of man. That’s the programme of The Nationalist. The replacement of the principle of struggle, competition and individualism by the artel principle, and the establishment of the sonhood of God and the brotherhood of man – that (briefly) is the programme of Dawn. It’s all very well. But the means proposed by them to achieve this are undefined and unclear, and can’t be otherwise. They propose preaching of all kinds, and the application to business affairs and to life of the principle of brotherhood, not the struggle of competition. But how can these principles be applied in a world of struggle? If the life of every person is now based on the struggle against others, this struggle will be waged to the end against everyone, as indeed we see – the struggle against women and children, in which they are made to work beyond the limits of their strength. Were it otherwise, there would be no security. Somebody else would overpower me, and I should perish. Then how can these principles be applied in this world? The only way is to surrender oneself and one’s whole life. Not to resist evil, and to perish in the name of truth. But they don’t get round to talking about that. I would like to write to them about it. Spent the evening just the same as every day.

28 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early and immediately settled down to work and got on with The Kreutzer Sonata for about four hours. Finished it. It seemed good, but I went out mushrooming and I was dissatisfied again – it’s not right. […] Sonya moved me yesterday. Arguing that she loved Vanechka because of his likeness to me, she said: ‘Yes, I loved you very much, only nothing came of it.’ […]

29 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] (3) Thought about the fact that I’m fussing over my writing of The Kreutzer Sonata out of vanity; I don’t want to appear in public as not fully finished, clumsy, even poor. And that’s bad. If there’s anything useful or necessary to people there, they will pick it out from what is bad. A perfectly finished story won’t make my arguments more convincing. I must be a holy fool [yurodivy]in my writing too. […]

29 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I lay down for a while. Sonya came in and said: ‘How bored I am!’ I’m sorry for her, sorry. […]

30 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought little; it’s impossible in company. And I prefer to be alone. But I’m not alone when Sonya is with me. […]

Today is 1 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Woke up early despite going to bed late; woke up early and thought about Lyova, and the fact that I did wrong in not telling him what is my, or rather their, misfortune, that they are all like hard-mouthed horses and I am the opposite, and that they don’t feel my movements, and I can’t pull them.

Thought: the most unprofitable disposition of people (economically and in every other way) is the one in which a man works only for himself, defends and provides for himself only. I think that if things were like that, and there were no groups, even families, where people work for others, people could not go on living. The most profitable arrangement of people (economic and every other) is the one in which each person thinks of the good of everyone, and unselfishly devotes himself to the service of that good. Given such an attitude on the part of everyone, each person will get the maximum share of the good. But this striving for the good of everyone is lacking among people; on the contrary, every person strives for his own good to the detriment of others; but this arrangement is so unprofitable that the struggle causes many people to weaken before long. And by the very nature of things it comes about that one man subdues others and makes them serve him, and the result is the most unprofitable, individual – or partly joint, and more profitable – labour. But with this association of people goes inequality and oppression. And so people make attempts at levelling (like the attempts of the artel or the commune) and at liberating people (political rights). Levelling always leads to unprofitability; as far as work is concerned the best worker gets the same as the worst in the interests of equal remuneration; as far as the use of an object is concerned, things are divided so that nobody should have a bigger or better share than anyone else (the division of land), and so the shares get smaller and smaller and more unprofitable for everyone. So the attempts at levelling, liberation from oppression and political rights lead to greater agitation and discord, and the liberation of the oppressed fails to take place, while unification, the subjection of a larger and larger number of people to one man, grows continually. And the greater the association of labour the more profitable that labour, but the more striking and disturbing the inequality. So what is to be done?

Individual labour is unprofitable, joint labour is profitable, but the inequality and oppression are dreadful. The socialists want to do away with inequality and oppression by appropriating capital to whole nations, to all mankind, so that the unit of association becomes mankind itself; but in the first place, not only mankind, but individual nations are not yet aware of the need for this, and until they are, such an arrangement will not become the common practice of all mankind; secondly, there is no possibility, among people striving after their own good, of finding those unselfish enough to manage mankind’s capital without taking advantage of their power, and again bringing inequality and oppression into the world. So mankind inevitably faces the dilemma of whether to renounce the progress being achieved by the association of labour, and even to go backwards, so as not to destroy equality and not to tolerate oppression, or boldly to admit that there must be inequality and oppression also, that you can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs, that struggle is the law of mankind. And such a view is adopted and supported by some people, but at the same time one can hear louder and louder the voices of those who rebel in the name of the ideals of Christ or of truth and goodness, which are allegedly recognised officially by our world. Now every child knows that the most profitable thing for everybody would be for each person to concern himself with the common cause, and so be provided for as a part of that common cause, but since this is not the case and it is impossible to worm oneself into each person’s soul and command it to be so, and since it is also impossible or would take infinitely long to please everyone, there remains the alternative: to continue to promote joint labour, the consequence of the subjugation of the many by the few, and at the same time to conceal from the deprived their inequality as compared with the fortunate ones, to ward off their attacks and to help and do good to the oppressed. This is what people do now, but capitalist associations are becoming bigger and bigger, and inequality and oppression more cruel. And side by side with this there is more widespread enlightenment, while inequality and the cruelty of oppression are becoming more apparent both to the oppressed and to the oppressors. Further progress along this path is becoming impossible, and people who don’t think much or don’t think things through are proposing imaginary ways to patch things up, namely to educate people in the awareness of the need for association for greater profit. This is stupid. If the aim is a big profit, anyone can make a big one for himself under the capitalist system, so nothing will come of these attempts except talk.

The most profitable system for everybody will not come about as long as the aim of each person is worldly wellbeing; it will come about when the aim of each person is wellbeing independent of worldly things, when each person says from his heart: ‘Blessed are the poor, blessed are they that mourn and are persecuted.’ […]

I don’t remember what I did yesterday. In the evening I read The Kreutzer Sonata to Nikolay Nikolayevich and Lyova, who is leaving tomorrow. It made a great impression on everybody, and most of all on me; all this is very important and necessary. […]

2 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late, started writing the manifesto141 in my notebook and wrote a few things down, but it’s impossible to begin with the general, I must begin with a particular instance. Begin, for example, with the need for alcohol in war. I’ll try. […]

7 September, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday Sonya read aloud The Kreutzer Sonata and Tanya made some just observations: (1) that one isn’t sorry for her, (2) that she won’t repent and ask for forgiveness. Her sin is so small compared with her punishment. […]

11 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Still unwell. In the morning wrote an introduction to my article on art142 – not good. There was a terrible storm during the night. Went to look at the fallen trees. I don’t remember the evening. One joyful thing I do remember is that the awareness of life through the recovery of my talent has been restored to me. And I continually remember that. And every time I do, every difficulty is joyfully resolved. It’s as if something were to expand and get trapped, and then resume its proper shape again at once and continue on its way without hindrance.

Sonya keeps talking about moving to Moscow, which she terribly wants – and needs. Again it will be annoying; I’ll be sorry to lose my solititude, sorry for the children – I shall be trapped; then I remember that my occupation is my soul, and all becomes clear and is set free again and continues on its way. My concern for my soul doesn’t mean that I’ll agree to go – not at all; it’s very possible that, on the contrary, it will force me not go go; but my interest is shifting from what is not in my power (according to Christian teaching) to what is necessary and important to me and therefore in my power.

15 September, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: Rejoice! Rejoice! The business of life, its purpose, is joy. Rejoice at the sky, the sun, the stars, the grass, the trees, animals, people. And take care that nothing disturbs this joy. If this joy is disturbed it means that you’ve made a mistake somewhere – find that mistake and correct it. This joy is most often disturbed by greed and ambition, and both are only satisified by toil. Avoid toil for your own benefit, wearisome and oppressive toil. Activity for someone else’s benefit is not toil. Be like children – rejoice always. How terrible is the delusion of our world which sees work – toil – as a virtue. It’s nothing of the sort, but rather a vice. Christ did not toil. This needs to be explained. […]

21 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Late. A nightmare during the night: a mad, raving woman being held fast from behind. Read and wrote a little. Finally decided to revise it; there’s no need for the murder.143 […]

21 September    Yes, I would like to die, it’s my fault. I was in low spirits, mainly because I seemed to have forgotten my life’s task: to guard and save my soul.

Today, the 21st, I thought: Slavophilism is love of the people, the recognition of the truth of their forms of life. It sprang up in our country because, thanks to Peter, the Russian upper classes imitated everything that the West did, followed the path on which it was obvious that there was nowhere further to go and adopted this point of view at a time when the people still hadn’t given up their old republican way of life. And now these upper classes see that there is no need to follow them, but that one should try – deliberately – to preserve these old and correct forms.

23 September, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I began to work on The Kreutzer Sonata, which is no longer The Kreutzer Sonata at all. Everything points to the murder taking place simply because of a quarrel.144 Read the story of a husband who killed himself and the wife who killed their children, and this confirmed my view still more. […]

24 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early. I don’t remember why I have written anything. Yes, I received some parcels yesterday from Tula, including letters from Apollov145 – remarkable. He’s giving up the priesthood. He writes: ‘I didn’t bother you before, I was afraid that Tolstoy wanted to retain something of the theological system which I hate. Now I am joining you in order to dedicate my life to the struggle against this deception.’ And various trenchant and forceful expressions. I like the story he made up about the trick Mara played in order to struggle against the Buddha’s light.146 And indeed, how can one struggle against Christianity, except by pretending to be a disciple? A wonderful book compiled from Tikhon Zadonsky.147 All this is bound to have consequences. I sometimes think that I am present at the lighting of chips of wood. Once they have caught fire, everything else will no doubt catch fire. The logs are still quite cold and untouched, but they will all undoubtedly catch fire. The children and Ilya came. After breakfast I read Tikhon, and then went to the wood to do some sawing. After dinner I wrote some letters to strangers. At dinner Sonya spoke about how she had watched a train approaching and wanted to throw herself under it. And I felt very sorry for her. The main thing is, I know how much I’m to blame. I remember for example my loathsome feeling of lust after Sasha was born. Yes, I must remember my sins. […]

28 September, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Sonya was angry that I hide my diary from her, but we patched things up smoothly.148 […] Went to bed late, engrossed in reading The Gardenins. Excellent, wide-ranging, truthful and noble. Lyova came.

29 September, Yasnaya Polyana    […] A thought occurred to me and then I forgot it. Well, never mind, it’s only a thought. If it were, I won’t say a million roubles, but merely a stone, a pearl or a diamond, I would have dug everything up until I found it, but it’s only a thought. Only fallow ground, only a seedling, only a thought! But a seed produces an oak tree, a thought produces an entirely different activity by the very strongest of creatures, man, and it seems to us that it’s nothing. […]

6 October, Yasnaya Polyana    In the morning I wrote a new variant of The Kreutzer Sonata – not badly, but sluggishly. I’m doing it for people’s sake, and that’s why it’s so difficult. […]

9 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Went and did some sawing with Rakhmanov and Danila, then some stitching, and we read Oblomov. The ideal is a good one.

10 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up later. A bit better. Looked through and revised everything from the beginning. I’m feeling disgusted with this whole work.149 Great depression. Worked till 4 and slept. After dinner I stitched boots, and continued Oblomov. The love story and the description of Olga’s charms are impossibly banal. Went to bed late.

11 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] On the way back I continued to think about the same thing. The question is: may one, for the sake of a great and very probable good, do a small but certain evil? No, because the greatest and most probable good may turn out to be harmful; it’s always possible to find two opposite opinions about any event; but a certain evil will always remain an evil. […]

16 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Despondency, grief, remorse; if only I could avoid hurting myself and others. Wrote a lot in revising The Kreutzer Sonata. Haven’t experienced such a state of depression for a long time.

20 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Wrote a useless letter to Sonya about visitors being a burden to me. A talk with Zhebunyov.150 I began by provoking him, he didn’t retaliate, I even challenged him to an argument, began to ‘be ironical’, as he put it, and hurt him. In the evening, when talking to him again, I learned that he had been in exile and in prison, and had been so morally exhausted that he had lost the habit of reading when in exile, and didn’t read now and was suffering from apathy. Moreover he spoke with great love about Boulanger, thereby demonstrating that he is good himself. He is a good, sick, suffering, exhausted, broken man; but I went for him in a boastful, swaggering manner, and tried to show off to the gallery what a splendid fellow I am. I was so sorry and ashamed that I began to cry when taking leave of him.

21 October, Yasnaya Polyana    A talk with Chistyakov151 about his marriage. There’s something unnatural in the role of teacher and adviser which they make me play. An argumentative and ironical talk with Novikov.152 I’ve only just covered myself with shame and ignominy, and I go and do the same again. If only I could say the same things with love. How far I am from that.

23 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Was late in the morning. Sonya arrived. Her first word was one of gratitude for my kind letter and the acknowledgement that her letter had been bad. […]

27 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up earlier, wanted to sleep badly.153 Disgusting. Rugin154 came, thin and ill. Told us that Leskov, Obolensky and everyone were finding that a definite attitude had been taken towards us by the government and the public: the attitude of approving even of Orthodoxy as a counter to the destructive, anarchical teaching of – they say – Tolstoy, but they ought to say of Christ. God grant it be so! It isn’t bad or good but it’s progress. It’s something very definite. […] (2) Re-read the Walt Whitman that had been sent to me. There’s a lot that is pompous and empty, but I found some good things here and there, for example, The Biography of a Writer.155 The biographer knows the writer and can describe him! But I don’t know what I’m like, I have no idea. Throughout my long life it’s only very, very seldom that anything of me has been visible to me. (3) Recalled how I, as a young man, lived in the name of the ideals of the past, to be like my father and grandfather, to live as they lived. My children – my Misha – lives by my instincts of the 40s. He doesn’t imitate the present me whom he sees, but the past me of the 40s. Why is this? Isn’t it due to what I thought before, that a child doesn’t live entirely here, but a part of him is where he came from, at a lower stage of development; I on the contrary already live in the place where I’m going to, at a higher stage of development; but in that place I am still backward, still a child. This is very naive. But I can’t help recognising it to be so. […]

28 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: (1) For a novel or drama: ‘Spiritual Birth’. He discovers the falseness of his life and and the truth of the true life, and he chooses the first path he comes to: giving to beggars, looking after the sick, founding a community, preaching – and he goes wrong. And then everyone attacks him and the truth with relish.156 […]

31 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early. Sad. Yes, I didn’t write down yesterday that I was angry with Fomich for drinking the coffee which I wanted, and made scathing remarks to him and, worse still, didn’t want Alyokhin to hear. How petty and nasty; I mustn’t forget it. Yes, and yesterday I got a long letter from Chertkov. He criticises The Kreutzer Sonata very justly;157 I wish I could follow his advice, but haven’t the inclination. Apathy, sadness, dejection. But things aren’t bad for me. Death is ahead of me, i.e. life, so why should I not be glad? It’s just because I feel I have lost interest in – I don’t say my own person or my own joys (they are dead and buried, thank God) – but in other people’s good; in the good of the ordinary people, that they should be educated, not drink, not live in poverty; I feel my interest is cooling even towards the general good, the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth; and I thought apropos of this cooling of interest:

Man lives through three phases, and I’m now living through the third. The first phase: man lives only for his own passions, eating, drinking, enjoyment, hunting, women, vanity, pride – and his life is full. It was so with me until I was thirty, until I had grey hair (with many people it’s much earlier), then I began to take an interest in the good of people, all people, mankind (this began in a decisive way with my school activities, although my efforts were becoming apparent and intervening here and there in my personal life even before that). This interest died down in the first period of my family life, but then reappeared with new and terrible force with the awareness of the vanity of my own personal life. All my religious awareness came to be concentrated in my efforts directed towards the good of the people, in work for the realisation of the Kingdom of God. And these efforts were just as great, and filled my whole life just as much as the efforts directed towards my own personal good. But now I feel these efforts weakening: they don’t fill my life, they don’t attract me directly; I have to argue to myself that the work is good, the work of giving material help to people, or combating drunkenness and the superstitions of the government and the Church. I feel within myself a new basis of life growing up – not growing up, but rather detaching itself, freeing itself from its wrappings – a new basis which will replace, by including within itself, my efforts directed towards other people’s good, just as my efforts directed towards other people’s good included within themselves efforts directed towards my own personal good. This basis is the service of God, doing His will in respect of that part of His being which has been entrusted to me. […]

1 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Read Le Disciple.158 How vile!

2 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Read Grot’s journal. I did wrong and was angry with Trubetskoy.159 A philosophy, which makes it its aim to prove the Iberian Mother of God. A solution of equations containing many x, y and z’s, when x has been given arbitrarily, is the most deliberately foolish solution. And how much work has gone into it! But the whole journal is a selection of articles without ideas or clarity of expression. […]

3 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: It’s a great mistake to think that the Kingdom of Heaven is out there beyond the grave, and just as great a mistake to think that it’s here. It’s within one, and when it’s within one, then here and there are inseparable. […]

5 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept better, but I’m still having dreams. Spent all morning reading a novel in the Revue des Deux Mondes‚160 and played games of patience on the subject of art. Yes, the most important thing yesterday was that science and art with a religious basis are a nonsense and an evil. I must show how science and art are evil: science is the theory of infections, the theory of heredity, of hypnotism; art is the inflaming of lustful desires. I want to begin writing articles without corrections in a new notebook. A cigarette-free notebook. Would also like to write an article for Tatyana’s day161 about people celebrating it by founding a temperance society, and taking all taverns and inns into their own hands as in Sweden. […]

7 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Finished reading Oblomov. How paltry! I’m getting news that The Kreutzer Sonata is making an impact, and I’m glad. That’s not good.

Today in Tula, as I looked at all the vanity and stupidity and nastiness of life, I thought: there’s no need to be angry at the stupidity of life, or to despair, as I used to do. All that was a sign of my lack of faith. Now I have more faith. I know that all this is boiling in a cauldron and cooking, otherwise it goes sour and will curdle and go off. So what do I want? That things should stay still? That people should not make mistakes and not suffer? But that’s the only way of knowing one’s mistakes and finding the right way. Some people find it for themselves, others for others, and others again … [sic]. They all do God’s will, whether they want to or not. And how good it is to want to. I write like this, and I begin to doubt whether there isn’t some exaggeration, some philosophical, Christian sentimentalising – some cant.162  I’m afraid of that. There’s nothing more terrible than overseasoning something good, overcooking it. That’s just where Bryullov’s ‘little bit’ comes in. It’s now 9. I’m going upstairs.

Upstairs I talked to Alexey Mitrofanovich.163 He raised the objection that science can indicate a moral law, that electricity somehow indicates the need for reciprocity. He’s been reading On Life all this time. He reads it and doesn’t see that he’s saying the same thing (only badly) that I expressed well and tried my hardest to refute in that book, namely the idea that you can turn away from an object and study it from the shadow it casts. Yes, you can’t prove anything to people, i.e. you can’t actually refute people’s delusions; everyone who is deluded has his own special delusion: And when you try to refute them, you gather them all together into one typical delusion, but each person has his own one, and because he has his own special delusion, he considers that you haven’t refuted it. He thinks you’re speaking about a different one. And indeed, how can you keep up with them all! And so it’s never necessary to try to refute or to polemicise. Only through art can you influence those who are deluded, and do what you wished to do by polemics. Through art you can take hold lock, stock and barrel of a man who is deluded, and entice him in the necessary direction. You can expound new conclusions from an idea by logical reasoning, but you mustn’t argue or refute, you must entice. […]

8 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Tried to write about art, but it’s no good. Played patience – a sort of madness. Read. A talk with the children about servants, a letter from Lyova and our entire way of life made me think: our life with its slave workers for our convenience, with our servants seems natural to us … We even think, as the children said: ‘After all nobody makes him, he became a man-servant of his own accord’; and as the teacher said: ‘If a man feels no humiliation at emptying my slops, then I’m not humiliating him’; and we think that we’re quite liberal and justified. But this whole position is something so offensive to the nature of man that it would have been impossible not only to establish, but even to imagine such a position, had it not been the consequence of a certain, very definite evil which we all know about, and which, we assure ourselves, has long since disappeared. Had it not been for slavery, nothing like this could possibly have been invented. Not only is it all the consequence of slavery, it is slavery, only in a different form. It all springs from murder. […]

9 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought more about my article on science and art: thought a lot, and formulated it clearly to myself; but then, when I came to demonstrate that present-day science is wrong because it doesn’t serve religion, I concentrated hard and couldn’t explain to myself how science could serve religion. Thought hard about it at Kozlovka. Walked back and began to think about it again and to try and find an answer as follows. Knowledge should serve the good – the unity of people – for it to be important. Truth, as well as love, also serves the cause of unity. As people try to reach a single truth for everyone, they unite among themelves. (For this reason superstitions are harmful – they divide people.) And so true science leads to unity; but in order for it to be such, it must really lead everyone to the truth. Expressions of truth must be clear, comprehensible and true, and indubitable. Does most science do this? On the contrary: its expressions are unclear and incomprehensible, and its truths are not only dubious, but provoke arguments and produce not unity, but disunity. This happens because those who call themselves the high priests of science have lost a religious basis (that’s not quite true) and make their aim not the unity of all people, but their own dilettante interests, fame and divertissement. […]

10 November    […] After dinner I unexpectedly began to write the story of Friedrichs.164 […]

14 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again: people need to feel themselves in the right in their own eyes; without that they can’t go on living, and so if their lives are bad, they can’t think rightly (it’s here that our ideas are ruined by the inertia of slavery), and that is the cause of the confusion in our heads. The main rule for life is to pull the trace of self-improvement (progress forward) evenly from both ends, both the improvement of our thoughts and of our lives, so that the one should not lag behind the other, nor overtake it. As it is we have exalted ideals before us, but our lives are base, while the people lead exalted lives, but their ideals are base.

19 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Alive, and very much so. Wrote all morning, finished Friedrichs more or less. In the evening I read Ibsen’s Comedy of Love. How bad! Clever Germanic witticisms – awful. Didn’t note down that Sonya was offended yesterday because we didn’t wait for her to read. It turned out that she is seething with resentment at Tanya who has given up her music. She says: I’m quite alone in the family.’ Perhaps I’m to blame. I was very sorry, lovingly sorry for her. How good that I wasn’t offended, but told her it was true I was sick at heart. And she relented and was sorry for me. Went for a walk in the morning and thought about her, and about writing her a letter which she could read after my death. I want to tell her that she must seek, seek faith, the basis of a spiritual life, and not live, as she does, by her instincts (all of which – no, not all – are maternal and good), and by what others do. […]

20 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late, chopped some wood, then first of all altered and revised Friedrichs. Work went very well. Went to Dvoriki and on the way things became clearer still: (1) The character of the mother-in-law is vulgar;165  she’s a liar, gives presents and talks about what she has given, and (2) he pays his second debt, which he could have concealed, and is somewhat liberal towards his peasants.

Sonya has gone to Tula and isn’t back. It’s 5 o’clock. I’m going to have dinner.

Read in the paper this morning how the German Emperor has arranged a jubilee celebration for Moltke pour le mérite, and the idea occurred to me very vividly of contrasting the refusal to do military service by the slovenly Khokhlov, and the artillery celebrations,166 the Emperor’s speech, the manoeuvres, etc. When I’m in a self-assured mood, I think that the themes of my writing are like bottles of kefir: one bottle gets drunk – the writing gets done – and the others go sour. God grant that these two themes – of servants and slavery, and of war and the refusal to serve – may ripen and that I may write about them. It seems as if they are going sour.

26 November, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Read Leskov.167 False. Bad.

28 November, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s now morning; after work and coffee I sat and thought over a game of patience: a pilgrim came today, I gave him fifteen copecks, he then asked for some trousers, and I refused although I had some. Thought about what I’d read yesterday in Evans’ book168 that life is love, and when life is love, it’s joy and goodness. And so all that is needed, the only thing that is needed, is to love, to be able to love, and to acquire the habit of loving all people always, to break the habit of not loving anyone, whether he is there or not. Thought: surely I know this, surely I’ve written about it, surely I’m supposed to believe in it. Then why don’t I do it – why don’t I live only by it? The whole life which I lead is only a tâtonnement [feeling my way], whereas I must put it firmly on this basis – namely to seek, desire and do one thing – good to people – to love them and increase the love in them, and to decrease the lack of love.

Good to people? What good? One thing only – love. I know this from my own experience, and so I desire this one thing for other people, and work for this one thing. To live, not tentatively, but boldly in this way means to forget that you are a Russian, a landowner, a peasant, a married man, a father, etc. and to remember only one thing: before you is a living human being; as long as you are alive you can do what will bring good to you and him and will fulfil the will of Him who sent you into the world, you can bind yourself to him by love. This is what I wrote in a fairy tale, only better.

I thought like this very clearly and went upstairs with the idea of putting it into practice there. Stood a while in the dining-room – the children were there, there was no opportunity, I went into the drawing-room. Tanya was lying on the sofa and Novikov was reading aloud to her, and it seemed to me embarrassing and not good, and instead of putting my thoughts into practice I turned round and went away. But I don’t despair, I’m working downstairs here within myself in order to understand, pity and love them. Yes, that’s the one thing that’s needed. It’s now gone 12. I doubt if I’ll do any writing.

1 December    As expected, I’ve done no writing. I don’t remember exactly what I did, not only on the 28th, but also on the 29th and 30th. Today is 1 December, Yasnaya Polyana. Yes, the day before yesterday, a day after I last wrote, the devil assailed me – assailed me above all in the form of a proud passion, a desire that everyone should immediately share my views; in the evening of the 29th I began arguing again with Novikov about science and about servants, and argued angrily. Next morning, the 30th, slept badly. It was so disgusting, I felt I’d committed a crime. […] All this after what I’d written on the 28th. I see, I see with my reason, that this is so, that there is no other life except love, but I can’t conjure it up in me. […]

Received a good letter from Biryukov. Read a beautifully written novel by Maupassant169 – though the theme is sordid. This morning I thought about Domashka:170 so then, we heal her body, but don’t think about her soul, we simply don’t comfort her as we could. And I began to think. It’s just here that the comforts of the Salvation Army come in, comforts which consist of raising the spirits and arousing hopes beyond the grave by acting on the nerves by means of singing and by solemn speech and intonation. I understand how they succeed, and how it seems important to them themselves when a dying person is cheered up and passes his last moments in ecstasy. But is it good? I feel it isn’t. I couldn’t do it. If I did, I would die of shame. But surely that’s because I don’t believe. But they believe. I can’t do this, but what I can and must do is to do what I would want others to do to me; I would want them not to leave me to die like a dog, alone, with my grief at leaving the world, but to take part in my grief, to explain to me what they know about my situation. This is what I must do. And I went to see her. She was sitting there swollen up and pathetic – and spoke – quite simply. Her mother was weaving, her father was busy dressing the little girl. I sat a long time, not knowing how to begin, and finally asked was she afraid of death, did she not want to die? She said simply: ‘Yes’. Her mother began to laugh and tell me that the twelve-year-old girl, her sister, said she would set up a cheap candle when Domashka died. ‘“Why?” – “Her nice clothes will be left to me,” she said. And I said: “I’ll make you work hard, you’ll have to work for her.” – “I’ll work as much as you like,” she said, “as long as the clothes are left to me.”’ I began to say: ‘You’ll be all right there, there’s no need to be afraid of death. God won’t do us any harm in life or death.’ I spoke badly and coldly, but it was impossible to tell lies and feign pathos. Her mother was sitting there weaving and her father listening. But I myself know that only just now I was angry, because the view of a garden which I don’t consider my own had been spoiled for me. […]

After dinner I played chess, was ashamed and bored, then went off to stitch boots. […] Then I went upstairs and had tea. All would have been well, but Sonya had had a letter from Mengden with a request from Vogüé to translate The Kreutzer Sonata.171 I said there was no need to. She began to say people suspected her of being mercenary, but she was quite the opposite. I said something. She began to be sarcastic and I got angry again, forgot that she is right after her own fashion and she needs to be right, and said I would go and sleep downstairs. She was quite prepared for a terrible scene, poison and everything. I collected myself, went back and asked her to calm down, but she wouldn’t, and I went for a walk round the garden. I walked and thought: how terrible it is that I forget, actually forget the main thing, that if one doesn’t regard one’s life as a mission, there is no life, only hell. […]

6 December, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up at 7 and at once began work, had a stroll before breakfast, then worked again right until dinner. Looked through the whole of The Kreutzer Sonata, made deletions, corrections and additions. I’m awfully fed up with it. The main thing is that it’s artistically wrong and false. I’m having clearer and clearer thoughts about Koni’s story.172 In general I’ve been in a state of inspiration for two days now. What will come of it I don’t know. […]

10 December, Yasnaya Polyana    Received a letter yesterday from Ertel and Gaydeburov to say that The Kreutzer Sonata will be banned. It only made me pleased. Also Hansen’s translations173 and Paris illustré with an article on Bondarev.174 It made me think: they get me all wrong. I ought to expound briefly and clearly what I think, namely: non-participation in government, military and judicial violence, (2) sexual abstinence, (3) abstinence from narcotics, alcohol and tobacco, (4) work. All without fine words, but briefly and clearly. […]

12 December, Yasnaya Polyana    Still the same pain. I’m reading a new American journal175 and struggling againt the pain – successfully. […] Yesterday Alexey Mitrofanovich was in raptures over my comedy.176 It’s unpleasant for me even to think about it. It’s getting on for 12, I’m going upstairs.

13, 14, 15, 16, 17 December, Yasnaya Polyana    For five days I haven’t written or done anything. I’ve read, and suffered pain. Tried to revise my comedy; stopped in the middle of the 1st act. Read Revue des Deux Mondes and Sleptsov.177 In the Revue a very remarkable novel, Chante-Pleure,178 remarkable for its description of poverty and the humiliation of poverty in the villages. The Eiffel Tower and this. […] Got a pleasant letter from Suvorin about The Kreutzer Sonata and a depressing one from Khokhlov senior, reproaching me for being responsible for the ruin of his sons.179 I’m vaguely collecting facts for an exposition of my teaching and for Koni’s story. […] Lyova came the day before yesterday. It pained me to see him ordering someone to take his boots off when he came back from hunting, and also scolding the youngster for not taking them off properly. […]

19 December    Read Sleptsov’s Hard Times. Yes, the demands were different in the 60s. And because the assassination of 1 March180 was connected with these demands, people imagined that the demands were wrong. That was a mistake. They will remain in force until they are met.

22 December    Alive. Today is the 22nd. All these last three days I’ve been revising my comedy. I’ve finished. It’s bad. A lot of people came; they’re giving a performance.181 It makes me depressed and ashamed sometimes, but the thought of not obstructing the manifestation of the divine in me is a help. I must write (1) about the coat. Sonya made me a new coat. I don’t need it. But it’s mine, and now Lyova wants to wear it and I’m sorry. He came back from hunting and I was disturbed by the thought that he’d spattered it with blood. I was almost angry with him. Previously I would certainly have been angry, even have quarrelled. A good example. […]

27 December    […] Wrote a bit of Koni’s story. Depressed by the falseness of the life around me, and the fact that I can’t find a way of showing them their errors without offending them. They’re performing my play, and I really think it’s having an effect on them and that in the bottom of their hearts they are all conscience-stricken and therefore dejected. But I’m ashamed the whole time, ashamed at this foolish expense in the midst of poverty.

Today on my walk I thought: those who maintain that this life is a vale of tears, a place of trial, etc., while the other world is a world of bliss, are, as it were, maintaining that all God’s infinite world is beautiful, or that life is beautiful in all God’s world, except for one place and time, namely the one in which we live.

That would be a strange thing to happen!

Yesterday the 26th    In the morning I unexpectedly began writing Koni’s story – not badly, I think. Yesterday there was a rehearsal, a mass of people, everyone was depressed. Vera182 started howling, and I went to console her and said by way of consolation: ‘I like it because it was very simple and intelligible.’ What I mean is: one can’t live for oneself alone. That’s death. It’s only life when you live for others or at least prepare yourself to be able to live for others. But how? Other people don’t need me or you. The thing is that when you live for yourself, you seek intercourse with people who can be useful to you – they are all rich, powerful and satisfied people, and so when you live for yourself and look around to try and find someone you can be useful to, it seems you can’t be useful to anyone. But if you understand that life is serving others, you will seek intercourse with the poor, the sick and the dissatisfied, and then there won’t be time to serve all those you would like to serve.

The day before yesterday, the 25th. Wrote letters to Chertkov, Boulanger, Annenkova, Semyonov, Mashenka, Alexeyev and someone else as well. I suddenly felt ashamed and disgusted that I’ve adopted a sermonising tone in my letters. I must stop this. […]

This is what I thought on the 23rd and what seemed to me very important: it’s a crude philosophical error to recognise three spiritual principles: (1) truth, (2) goodness, (3) beauty. There are no such principles. There is only the fact that if a person’s activity is sanctified by truth, the consequence of that activity is goodness (goodness for himself and others); and the manifestation of goodness is always beautiful. Truth which doesn’t have goodness as its consequence such as, for example, the theory of numbers, non-Euclidian geometry, nebulae associated with the origin of the universe, etc., like goodess which doesn’t have truth as its basis such as, for example, charity by means of piles of accumulated money, etc., and like beauty which doesn’t have goodness as its basis such as, for example, the beauty of flowers, forms or woman are not truth, goodness or beauty at all, but only the likeness of them.

Yes, the monastic life has much that is good: above all the fact that temptations are removed and time is occupied with harmless prayers. That’s very good, but why not occupy the time with the work of feeding oneself and others, which is natural to man? […]

29, 30, 31 December, Yasnaya Polyana    These last days I’ve been trying to write Koni’s story. I’ve revised a bit, but haven’t made any progress. All the time there have been rehearsals, the play, fuss and bother, a mass of people – and all the time I’ve felt ashamed. The play isn’t bad perhaps, but I’m still ashamed. Got another letter from Chertkov. But the main impressions of these days are: (1) I’m sorry for Tanya. She even flirts with Zinger, and she’s unhappy. (2) They read The Kreutzer Sonata the day before yesterday, and I listened. Yes, it made a terrible impression. Stakhovich doesn’t understand a thing. But Ilya understands. (3) I’m reading Minsky’s book.183 The beginning (the negative side), is remarkably powerful, but the positive side is awful. It’s not even delirium, but madness. One needs to discover the meaning of life, and suddenly, instead of this, you get a vague feeling of ecstasy over meons. […]

Notes

1 In manuscript or proof, since Leskov’s story (Zeno the Goldsmith), due to be published in Russian Thought, was banned by the censors.

2 Mrs Humphry Ward’s novel, expressing her view that Christianity could be revitalised by emphasising its social mission at the expense of its miraculous elements. Published in England in 1888, it was already available in Russian in 1889.

3 Sonya insisted that the proposed marriage between her daughter Masha and P. I. Biryukov (Posha) be postponed for a year. Biryukov ranked second after Chertkov among Tolstoy’s closest friends and collaborators and wrote the first comprehensive biography of him (Letters, II, 413 ff.).

4 The World’s Advance. Thought and the Universal Republic, an American journal edited by Lucy Mallory in Portland.

5 N. A. Polushin, a writer of stories for the people whom Tolstoy recommended to the publisher Sytin.

6 I. I. Yanzhul, professor of financial law at Moscow University and a close friend of Tolstoy’s (Letters, II, 502, fn.2.).

7 An old-established French bookshop and music shop on the Kuznetsky Bridge.

8 An article about the Peter and Paul Fortress in the Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine.

9 N. Y. Grot, professor of philosophy at Moscow University and editor of the journal Problems of Philosophy and Psychology which later published Tolstoy’s What is Art? (Letters, II, 428). In 1910 Tolstoy wrote his memoirs of him. N. A. Zverev, also a professor at Moscow University and later Deputy Minister of Education and a member of the Council of State. He wrote an essay on Count L. N. Tolstoy as Artist (1916). L. M. Lopatin – see 1884, Note 79.

10 Education Day, 12 January. This day – the anniversary of the founding of Moscow University, and also Tatyana’s Day – was celebrated as a university holiday throughout Russia.

11 V. A. Goltsev, editor of Russian Thought, and particularly interested in Tolstoy’s views on art.

12 The editor of the Russian Gazette which was publishing Tolstoy’s article.

13 A. N. Dunayev, director of the Moscow Trade Bank and a frequent correspondent of Tolstoy’s (Letters, II, 479).

14 Books on the Mormon sect, founded by Brigham Young in 1830, and sent to Tolstoy by Young’s daughter.

15 Apropos of the publication of Tolstoy’s article Education Day, 12 January in the Russian Gazette.

16 A. I. Yershov had served with Tolstoy in the Crimea and asked him to write a foreword to his book Sevastopol Memoirs of an Artillery Officer. Tolstoy’s foreword was first published in England in 1902.

17 Emile de Laveleye’s book Modern Sodalism in a Russian edition, sent to Tolstoy by Biryukov.

18 N. F. Fyodorov.

19 L. P. Nikiforov, a populist, translator and author of a number of articles on Tolstoy. Tolstoy had commissioned him to write an article on the explorer James Cook (Letters, II, 463 ff.).

20 F. A. Zhyoltov, a peasant author of stories about the life of workers and peasants and a member of the sect of Molokans (so called because they drank milk during fasts) whose members rejected Orthodox Church ritual and lived a communal existence, sharing their property in common.

21 N. F. Shelgunov’s Essays on Russian Life, which contained a criticism of the principle of forcible non-resistance to evil.

22 Tolstoy’s youngest son, who died in 1895.

23 Vanechka.

24 S. T. Semyonov, a peasant writer of whom Tolstoy thought highly. He later wrote a foreword to a collection of Semyonov’s peasant stories which were awarded a prize by the Academy of Sciences.

25 L. F. Annenkova, wife of a lawyer, who frequently corresponded with Tolstoy on religious matters.

26 B. N. Popov, whose book entitled Poems had just been published in Moscow.

27 By Voltaire.

28 G. Stewart, a friend of Walt Whitman’s. The words ‘horse-flesh’, ‘evasive’, ‘the friends of peace fight between themselves’ and ‘I will rough it’ are written in English in the diary.

29 See Note 16.

30 Lewis Wallace’s historical novel about the early days of Christianity: Ben Hur: a Tale of the Christ. It was translated into Russian soon after it was published.

31 See Note 16.

32 By Édouard Rod. The author sent a copy to Tolstoy and Tolstoy later quoted from it in The Kingdom of God is Within You.

33 The first – an unfinished article; the second – thought to be the first mention of Resurrection.

34 I. S. Ivin, a peasant who was a prolific author of novellas, short stories and poems, and provided raw material for the publishers of cheap popular literature. Tolstoy tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to work for The Intermediary.

35 D. P. Sokolov, sentenced in 1875 in the so-called ‘Trial of the 193’.

36 By Rider Haggard (translated into Russian in 1887).

37 Literature and Dogma.

38 For copying out the chapter on money in What Then Must We Do?, which came to light during a police search.

39 In English in the diary.

40 Mémoires d’une Princesse Arabe by Arvède Barine (pseudonym of Mme Vincens).

41 Not an exact quotation, but a sentiment which occurs in similar words in several places in the Moral Discourses.

42 V. V. Nagornova, Tolstoy’s niece.

43 An article by the French diplomat in the Revue des Deux Mondes on the United States of America entitled Le centenaire d’une constitution.

44 One of a series of articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes on the modern state by the French writer on politics and economics Paul Leroy-Beaulieu.

45 Matthew Arnold’s St Paul and Protestantism; with an introduction on Puritanism and the Church of England. Tolstoy refers to it again on 4 March.

46 Having ‘dictated’ his views on art to Goltsev, Tolstoy committed them to paper the next day and sent them to Goltsev for use in his public lecture on The Beautiful in Art.

47 William Frey, a Russian who emigrated to America in 1868 to found an agricultural community on communist lines and returned to Russia in 1885 after a period in England. (Letters, II, 401). Tolstoy never finished the article he intended to write about him after reading an English biography of Frey by Edward Spencer Beesly.

48 V. A. Shidlovskaya.

49 N. A. Kasatkin – an artist and academician who became a People’s Artist of the R.S.F.S.R. after the revolution. N. N. Arkhangelsky –a doctor in the Tula province. I.I. Yanzhul – Note 6. N. P. Trirogova – a music teacher who wrote stories under a pseudonym.

50 I. N. Panin lectured on Russian literature in America. Tolstoy read his book Lectures on Russian Literature, 1889, which had an article on Tolstoy the artist and preacher.

51 From the Revd Thomas van Ness, a priest in Denver, Colorado, who had visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana in 1887.

52 K. A. Klodt, whose sculpture of Tolstoy ploughing is now in the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow.

53 Note 16.

54 See 1884, Note 12.

55 V. S. Solovyov’s introductory article to M. S. Solvyov’s translation, in which Tolstoy’s own translation is criticised.

56 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, an early Christian document discovered in the Patriarchal Library at Constantinople in the second half of the nineteenth century.

57 Either S. M. Georgiyevsky’s Principles of the Life of China, 1888, or How the Chinese Live by A. A. Gatsuk, 1889.

58 Now in the Tretyakov Gallery. Yaroshenko originally called it What Men Live By after Tolstoy’s story of the same title; it was finally entitled Life Everywhere.

59 Poems by the nineteenth-century Portuguese poet Anthero de Quental, who in later life became interested in Buddhism.

60 Probably the collection of Chekhov’s stories In the Twilight, published in 1888.

61 Tolstoy’s comment is thought to refer to Chekhov’s story Agafya.

62 Three works (the second a brochure by Biryukov) edited for publication by The Intermediary.

63 It is not known which.

64 Tolstoy’s On Life, translated into French by his wife and Edmond Tastevin and published in Paris in 1889.

65 Tolstoy completed his article On Art the following day, and it was eventually published in Russian Wealth.

66 The fourth edition of Tolstoy’s works, which his wife was responsible for.

67 The comedy eventually entitled The Fruits of Enlightenment.

68 A novel by Mrs Caroline Clive (1855, Russian translation 1859). It concerns the fate of a man who murders his wife to marry the woman he loves, escapes suspicion but is later driven by conscience to confess, with disastrous results for his family.

69 Sonya’s name for the ‘Tolstoyans’ with their addiction to manual labour and a peasant way of life.

70 Knop’s textile factory.

71 William Wilberforce Newton, an American Episcopalian minister, accompanied by another minister and a writer. Newton published an account of this visit in A Run Through Russia; the Story of A Visit to Count Tolstoi, 1894. Tolstoy refers to the writer in English as a ‘literary man’, and gives the titles of his own books (What to do and Life) in English also.

72 Possibly Resurrection.

73 A formula frequently used by Tolstoy the night before the next day’s entry.

74 The last chapters of Old Times in Poshekhoniye.

75 Tolstoy had originally intended to walk from Urusov’s to Moscow.

76 In 1866 Tolstoy had spoken at a court-martial in defence of Vasily Shabunin, a soldier accused of striking an officer. Shabunin was found guilty and executed. In 1889 a witness for the defence, N. P. Ovsyannikov, sent Tolstoy an account he had written of the episode which was later published with Tolstoy’s amendments as An Episode from Count Tolstoy’s Life. Tolstoy himself wrote his Memoirs of a Soldier’s Court-Martial in 1908. See W. Kerr, The Shabunin Affair, 1982.

77 Not the article referred to in Note 65, but a new article On What is and What is not Art …

78 In recognition of his fifty years as a poet Fet had been appointed a court chamberlain, which entitled him to wear a uniform with a special key. The poet Polonsky had been awarded the order of Anna, First Class, which was worn on a ribbon over the shoulder.

79 La folie amoureuse contemporaine, 1889, which the author had sent to Tolstoy.

80 Tolstoy visited the 17th “Itinerants” Exhibition, where Repin’s picture of St Nicholas saving three men wrongly condemned to death in Myra in Lycia and Gay’s picture of Christ and his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane were on display.

81 S. I. Taneyev, the distinguished pianist and composer. Sonya’s infatuation with him later caused Tolstoy acute – and quite groundless – jealousy (Letters, II, 554, fn.1).

82 I. I. Gorbunov-Posadov, a writer and poet, and a close collaborator with Chertkov and Biryukov on The Intermediary of which he later became editor.

83 A correspondent known only by the initials Kh. A.

84 A Persian legend written by A. I. Apollov for The Intermediary, but banned at the time in Russia and first published in England.

85 L. Y. Obolensky, editor of Russian Wealth.

86 The philosopher V. S. Solovyov.

87 L. F. Maklakova, wife of a Moscow University professor, who wrote under the pseudonym Nelidova and visited the Tolstoys several times at their Moscow house.

88 It is not known what manuscript is meant.

89 J. H. Noyes’ History of American socialisms, Philadelphia, 1870.

90 An American religious, anarchical and pacifist sect which Tolstoy read about in Noyes’ book.

91 As well as Noyes’ book, Tolstoy was reading Gustave-Adolphe Hubbard’s Saint- Simon, sa vie et ses travaux, Paris, 1857.

92 If he wished to marry Tolstoy’s daughter Masha.

93 The Importance of Feeling in Man’s Consciousness and Activity, 1889.

94 New conscripts at the Khamovniki barracks.

95 The journey on foot from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana with Y. I. Popov.

96 Tolstoy’s comedy The First Distiller.

97 The farmstead on the Tolstoys’ Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye estate where his son Ilya and his family were living at the time.

98 Ilya’s wife. Tolstoy had walked some twenty kilometres in the heat of the day.

99 In Tolstoy’s notebook there is a ‘bill of indictment’ against Ilya and Sonya accusing them of leading an extravagant life with servants, horses, carriages and dogs, and alluding to the growing rift between husband and wife.

100 N. V. Uspensky’s Doing one’s own Job.

101 With his son Ilya, who accompanied him to the station.

102 W. E. H. Lecky, the English historian and philosopher. Tolstoy was reading the chapter on the aesthetic, scientific and moral development of rationalism in the Russian translation of Lecky’s book History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, London, 1865.

103 In 1888 Sonya had bought two more estates, as well as managing the Yasnaya Polyana, Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye and Samara properties.

104 An article in the form of an appeal denouncing the injustice of existing social relationships, which Tolstoy never completed.

105 Sonya’s cousin, with whom Tatyana was for a time in love.

106 The May issue published the next instalment of Ertel’s The Gardenins. See also the entry for 28 September.

107 The London weekly Pall Mall Budget.

108 Alexandra Tolstaya, who was spending a few days at Yasnaya Polyana.

109 It is not known what he read.

110 The theme is dealt with to some extent in The Forged Coupon.

111 By the fifteenth-century Czech philosopher P. Chelčický.

112 Gottfried Arnold (1666–1714) – not Gotlieb as Tolstoy wrote – the German theologian and historian of the Protestant Church.

113 Ernest Renan’s Histoire du peuple d’Israël.

114 A. I. Yevdokimov, a student from Kiev. G. P. Bronevsky, a forestry student from Petersburg who had visited Yasnaya Polyana the previous year.

115 An American newspaper published in Philadelphia.

116 See the entry for 30 April.

117 G. Stewart, a friend of Whitman’s, had sent Leaves of Grass to Tolstoy as well as some other poems by Whitman. It is not clear whether he also sent De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater, which is in the library at Yasnaya Polyana.

118 Vera Kuzminskaya.

119 A shortened version of Victor Hugo’s novel, revised by Tolstoy and published by The Intermediary.

120 The hero of S. T. Semyonov’s story The Yardman.

121 The article later called Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?

122 The book by the American writer Adin Ballou (1803–90) entitled Christian Non resistance in all its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended, Philadelphia, 1846.

123 Father Sergey develops this idea to some extent. For yurodstvo see 1884, Note 21.

124 I. B. Feinermann, a Ukrainian Jew, strongly influenced by Tolstoy’s ideas, who came to live near him in 1885 and became a convert to Orthodoxy in order to teach at the Yasnaya Polyana school. He wrote extensively about Tolstoy (Letters, II, 489).

125 A Utopian novel by the American novelist and political theorist Edward Bellamy (1888), the hero of which falls asleep in 1887 and wakes up in 2000 to find that great social improvements have taken place which have transformed capitalism.

126 They had been staying with Tolstoy since 27 June.

127 Prokofy Vlasov, a Yasnaya Polyana peasant. When the French writer Paul Déroulède visited Yasnaya Polyana and began to expound his ideas on a Franco-Russian alliance directed against Germany, Vlasov’s comments that Déroulède should rather come and work in Russia and bring a German with him impressed Tolstoy. See Chapter 9 of his article Christianity and Patriotism.

128 In The Fruits of Enlightenment.

129 As the cutting has disappeared, it is impossible to check this improbable English quotation.

130 Gottfried Arnold’s Unparteiische Kirchen-und Ketzer-Historie was first published in 1688. There were several editions, one in 1729, and 1720 may be a mistake on Tolstoy’s part. Arnold’s book is referred to in Chapter 3 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

131 See 1884, Note 97.

132 Tolstoy devoted several pages of What is Art? to developing these words of the Russian painter Bryullov which he had first heard from his friend Gay.

133 She had gone to visit the sick.

134 It is more likely that Tolstoy read about Keats in an article by Henri-Joseph Texte in the Revue des Deux Mondes. John Middleton Murry compared the two men in his article Keats and Tolstoy.

135 The words ‘equivocation’ and ‘delusion’ both appear in English in the diary.

136 A. V. Alyokhin, the son of a wealthy merchant who founded a Tolstoyan commune with his two brothers, and later helped Tolstoy with his famine relief work (Letters, II, 470).

137 This does not come in the final version of the story.

138 Probably the sections on art and aesthetics in the second and third books of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, which Tolstoy read in a Russian translation.

139 Tolstoy wrote two articles on the subject in 1901.

140 With N. N. Gay about Masha’s intended marriage to P. I. Biryukov.

141 The unfinished article mentioned in Note 33.

142 The article was later called Science and Art.

143 But in the final version of The Kreutzer Sonata Pozdnyshev did murder his wife.

144 This was not Tolstoy’s eventual solution.

145 Letters from a priest to Chertkov, which Chertkov had sent on to Tolstoy.

146 This legend of Apollov’s was published in 1918 in The Voice of Tolstoy and Unity.

147 Tolstoy was reading the manuscript of Edifying Exhortations of Saint Tikhon Zadonsky, compiled by Ozmidov and Chertkov’s wife and published the following year.

148 She nevertheless read the diary surreptitiously.

149 The Kreutzer Sonata.

150 L. N. Zhebunyov, a former political prisoner.

151 N. M. Chistyakov, a friend of Ertel’s, whom Chertkov invited to look after all his economic and financial affairs, which Chistyakov did until 1894.

152 A. M. Novikov taught the Tolstoy children in 1889–90 and later worked with Tolstoy on famine relief. He left some reminiscences of Tolstoy.

153 Here and in several other places (e.g. 1 December 1889, 5 February 1890 and 25 June 1891) the expression durno spat which I have translated literally as ‘to sleep badly’ clearly seems to imply masturbation, whereas the more common plokho spat (also translated in the same way) has no such connotation.

154 I. D. Rugin, who lived for a while with Biryukov and was temporarily attracted by Tolstoy’s ideas.

155 There is a question mark after this title in the manuscript and I have been unable to trace it among Walt Whitman’s works.

156 These ideas were expressed later in Father Sergey.

157 For example, that Tolstoy’s views on sex are too closely implicated in the passenger’s narrative, which is insufficiently lively and natural as a result.

158 By Paul Bourget.

159 For an article by Professor S. N. Trubetskoy, later Rector of Moscow University, on the nature of human consciousness in the new journal Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, edited by N. Y. Grot.

160 Henry Rabusson’s Idylle et drame de salon.

161 See Note 10. Tolstoy had written an article for Tatyana’s Day (12 January) 1889, but did not write another one.

162 In English in the diary.

163 A. M. Novikov.

164 The original title of The Devil.

165 In English in the diary.

166 The celebrations on 8 November 1889 to mark the 500th anniversary of the Russian artillery.

167 Probably Leskov’s story Figura.

168 F. W. Evans, The Divine Law of Cure, Boston, 1884.

169 Fort comme la mort.

170 Domma Makarova, a young Yasnaya Polyana peasant girl who was seriously ill and whom Tolstoy had recently visited.

171 Vicomte Melchior de Vogüé’s pioneering study Le roman russe had appeared in 1886, and he wrote extensively on Russian literature. Neither he nor his wife (who also asked to translate The Kreutzer Sonata – Letters, II, 451) actually did so.

172 Resurrection, so called because the story which served as the basis for it was told to Tolstoy by the lawyer A. F. Koni (Letters, II, 556).

173 P. G. Hansen, a Dane who had worked in Russia. He translated into Danish and sent to Tolstoy Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, The Power of Darkness, The Fruits of Enlightenment and some minor works (Letters, II, 482).

174 T. M. Bondarev, a peasant, religious sectarian and the author of Hard Work and Slothfulness or the Triumph of the Farmer which Tolstoy greatly admired and for which he wrote a foreword.

175 The Dawn. At the time Tolstoy was suffering acutely from pains in the stomach and liver.

176 Novikov was present at the first reading aloud of the play which eventually became The Fruits of Enlightenment.

177 V. A. Sleptsov’s story Hard Times, which was first published in 1865.

178 By the French writer Émile Pouvillon.

179 A wealthy stockbroker who was concerned about the influence of Tolstoy’s views on his sons, one of whom had been expelled from college and was working on a Tolstoyan agricultural community.

180 The assassination of Alexander II.

181 The first amateur performance, at Yasnaya Polyana, of what was to become The Fruits of Enlightenment was to be given on 30 December.

182 Vera Kuzminskaya, who had come from Petersburg to take part in the performance, played the part of Marya Konstantinovna.

183 By the Light of Conscience, written by N. M. Minsky under the joint influence of mysticism and Tolstoyan ideas (Letters, II, 448–9, fn.2).

1890

Today, 3 January, Yasnaya Polyana    On the 1st I spent all day revising my comedy;1 not bad. The same day the Tula people came and danced. On the 2nd I wasn’t myself all day because I hadn’t slept the night before. […] Read Minsky’s splendidly written book with a terribly bad ending. […]

A prophet, a real prophet, or still better a poet 2 [a doer], is a person who thinks and understands in advance what people including himself will feel. I am this sort of prophet for myself. I always think what I don’t yet feel, for example the injustice of the lives of the rich, the need for hard work, etc. and then very soon begin to feel these things myself.

Read: Emerson was told that the world would soon end. He replied: ‘Well, I think I can get along without it.’3 Very important.

10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 January, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’ve felt a strange indifference recently towards expressing the truth about life – it’s so hard to accept.13. The Rayevsky boys4 came and Tanya made me angry. I’ve been revising the comedy. The Rayevsky boys came on the 12th as well; I went to the school5 to light the stove. 11. The comedy and the school again.

Thought: (1) The sexual act is so attractive because it removes responsibility from oneself, it releases one, as it were, from fulfilling the law and transfers it, the responsibility, to others. It won’t be I who will attain the kingdom of God, but my children. That’s why women are so engrossed in their children. […]

I’m sexually disturbed. Thought about the attitude of certain people towards The Kreutzer Sonata: Samarin, Storozhenko and many others, Lopatin: it seems to them that it’s about a special person, whereas, they say, ‘there’s nothing like that about me’. Can’t they really find anything? There’s no remorse because there’s no progress, or else there’s no progress because there’s no remorse. Remorse is like the breaking open of an egg shell or a grain of corn, as a consequence of which the seed begins to grow and is exposed to the influence of air and light, or else it’s the consequence of growth, as a result of which the egg shell is broken. Yes, there’s also an important and very vital division of people: people with remorse and people without it.

18 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Yesterday I copied out the comedy, and today I’ve started revising it again. It’s bad. Work was interrupted by Butkevich,6  who arrived from the country. Had a talk with him. He told me that many people hated The Kreutzer Sonata, saying that it was a description of a sexual maniac. This distressed me at first, but then I was pleased that at least it had stirred up something that needed stirring up. Of course it could have been better, but I did the best I could. […]

21 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Revised the comedy and read. Sledged with the children on benches. Sonya still very agitated and restless.

A strange thing, this concern for perfection of form. It isn’t wasted. But only as long as the content is good. Had Gogol written his comedy crudely and feebly, it wouldn’t have been read by one millionth part of the people who have now read it. A work of art must be sharpened for it to penetrate. To sharpen it means to perfect it artistically – then it will break through indifference and make itself felt by repetition. […]

22 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early and revised the comedy all morning. Hope I’ve finished. Walked to the school. Masha is sick; she has written a good letter to Posha. Tanya is good, simple, cheerful and kind. Before that, I read another book of sayings of Indian wisdom. There’s much in it that is good and universal. Thanks to the comedy and the playing of The Power of Darkness in Petersburg and Berlin,7  I’ve begun to succumb to the pleasure of praise. […]

28 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Gay senior came, and brought a sketch of his picture8  – very good. All the time is spent in talks with Chertkov. He told me about his mental condition.9 How terrible.

29, 30 January, Yasnaya Polyana    […] All would be well were it not for the fear of Chertkov’s excited condition. Felt this morning that I don’t want to pass on my thoughts to him, precisely because he accepts them so greedily. I was frightened. That’s I who am weak. I need to feed on them myself. I’ve been vainly trying all these days to write an afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata. It’s gone 11 now – my stomach aches.

2 February, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Dolgov came about tokology; wrote a foreword.10 […]

3 February, Pirogovo    […] Slept for an hour. Got on with the afterword. Right thoughts, but no energy to write them down. Laughed with the good-natured Marya Mikhaylovna and told her the story of the saint’s life and the music teacher.11 It would be good to write it. A merchant’s sick daughter – her illness makes her seductive – also her crime – she is a murderer. Yel. Serg’s confessor is a coarse peasant. Our people are always coming to see you. She had always been meaning to. And however holy you are, she was holier than you. I’m still doing wrong […].

5 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Wanted to sleep badly; struggled all morning with the afterword. Began by chopping logs and went to Tanya’s school. Dozed off after coffee. I must try to write in the morning on an empty stomach. After dinner I read and thought; wanted to write, but had no energy. Thought about a drama on the subject of life:12 the despair of a man who has seen the light, and has brought this light into the darkness of life with hope, and the assurance of lightening this darkness; and suddenly the darkness becomes darker still. […]

11 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Strange – a voluptuous dream. I’m not sleeping much. Weakness. I want to write, but haven’t the strength. Thought today: about the letter I began to write to Kolechka;13 the main temptation in my situation is the fact that life in abnormal conditions of luxury, tolerated at first so as not to destroy love, later takes hold of one with its temptations, and you don’t know whether you live like that for fear of destroying love, or from having yielded to temptation. A sign of the fact that it’s the former – i.e. that you tolerate temptation only for fear of destroying love – is that not only are the earlier demands of one’s conscience not relaxed, but new ones appear.

I also thought that there’s no need to write an afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata. There’s no need to, because it’s impossible for people who think differently to be convinced by arguments. It’s necessary first of all to drive their feelings in a different direction while letting them argue that they are right. They will feel themselves wrong, but they will still argue that they are right. It’s not that people need to argue, but they can’t live without doing so. Reason is a lantern hung on each man’s chest. A man cannot walk or live except by the light of that lantern. The lantern always lights up the road ahead for him – the path he is walking along. And arguments about my lantern lighting up my path for me, when my path is different from his (although my path is right and his is wrong) cannot make him see anything different, or fail to see what he does see on the path he is walking along. He must be driven off the road. And that’s not the job of reason, but of feeling. Even when he has been driven off the wrong road and is walking in the right direction, he will go on seeing for a long time what is lit up by his lantern on the wrong path. On my walk, I thought a great deal about Koni’s story. Everything is clear and very good. (1) He didn’t want to possess her, but did so because that’s what one has to do – so he thought. In his imagination she is charming. He smiles, and he feels like crying. (2) A drive to church, darkness, a white dress, a kiss. (3) The old chambermaid takes the money, but looks on sadly. (4) The old chambermaid is a fatalist, Katyusha is lonely. (5) When she sees him passing through, she wants to throw herself under the train, but gets on and feels the child in her womb. (6) He asks his aunt where she is. A chambermaid at a landowner’s. She is leading a bad life, having a liaison with a man-servant. And she can’t help having the liaison, her sensuality has been aroused. (7) He is agitated and asks: did you drive her out? And did she cry very much? And am I to blame? etc. (8) He tried ambition14 – bad, not in keeping with his character – went abroad – Paris – dissipation – bad. Only left with reading, elegance, hunting, cards, first nights. Hair going grey – boredom.

16 February, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Got on with Koni’s story; not bad. Received a remarkable book, a little English magazine Rising Star. An article by Elder Evans on the hundredth anniversary of the American republic, a remarkable one.15

18 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Read about Kublinskaya in Warsaw. And wrote an indictment of the government, the Church and public opinion16 – not good. […]

19 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Ache all over. Went to the school, read The Historical Bulletin on the Decembrists.17 […]

27 February, Optina18    Arrived early. […] At Optina Mashenka would only talk about Amvrosy, and everything she said is awful. What I saw in Kiev was confirmed – the young novices are saints, God is with them, but the elders are not, the devil is with them. Went to see Amvrosy yesterday, talked about various faiths. I said: ‘where we live in God, that is the truth, we all live together; where we live in the devil, that is falsehood, we all live separately’. Boris19 moved me. Amvrosy, on the contrary, is pathetic, impossibly pathetic with his temptations. He hits people on the head, teaches that there’s no need for her to be distressed about the fact that she gets angry with the servants, and doesn’t see that she needs to. It’s obvious from what she says that the monastery is spiritual sybaritism. Boris said that the purpose of the world and of mankind is to increase the number of angels.

28 February, Optina    Dreamed that I was talking with a priest about drunkenness, tolerance and something else besides that I’ve forgotten. About tolerance: don’t despise Jew or Tatar, but love them. For me that means loving the Orthodox. I think I’ve achieved this on this, my third visit to Optina. Help me God. Their misfortune is that they live by other people’s work. They are saints, brought up on slavery. It’s now 10 o’clock, I’ll go and see Leontyev.20

Went to Leontyev’s. Had an excellent talk. He said: ‘You are without hope.’ I said to him: ‘And you are full of hope.’ That fully expresses our attitudes to faith. Then we set off. An enjoyable journey as far as Mishnevo, forty versts from Optina. Stayed the night in a peasant hut. […]

9 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I read in New Christianity: Christ must be in social life, in politics, in business.21 Just fancy Christ in business! It’s the same as saying Christ in kicking or killing (war). Yes, these people must be made to understand that all positions in society from that of landowner to hangman are ranked according to their moral nature, and therefore it’s not enough to be good in the position you occupy; you must choose one position rather than another.

I’m still reading Leskov.22 It’s not good, because it’s not truthful. More thoughts during these days. 4 March. Seryozha said: ‘One must be occupied.’ That doesn’t mean anything. One must know what to be occupied with. […]

Read Tanya’s diary and loved her tenderly as I looked into her weak, restless soul. She writes: ‘I’m not a bad person really.’ She said that herself, and there was the chance to see it. But after all, Pobedonostsev, and Nikanor, and Skabichevsky23  and others all say just the same. One needs to establish if their view of themselves is right, and one can. […]

Yesterday, 8 March    Weakness, pain, jaundice. Read Leskov; letters. A lot about The Kreutzer Sonata. People ask: ‘What next?’ I must write an afterword, but can’t. […]

11 March, Yasnaya Polyana    A bit better. Received Yanzhul’s article,24 and read it. The main thing in their view is that there’s no need to make life different, to touch institutions, but only to make life better. I’d like to write about this in connection with ‘Christian business’. […]

17 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Two types: one takes a critical attitude not only towards his behaviour, but also towards his position – for example, he cannot accept a post as a civil servant, cannot accumulate and keep money, accept interest, etc. and as a result is always in need, in poverty, cannot feed his family or even himself, and through his own weakness gets into the position – humiliating for himself and depressing for others – of having to beg; the other only takes a critical attitude towards his behaviour, but accepts posts uncritically, and having once obtained for himself the position of a civil servant, a wealthy man, feeds himself and his family plentifully, helps others, and is a burden to no one (not noticeably, at least). Who is better? Neither. But certainly not the latter. […]

Gaston Boissier25 writes that Christians in the first century only took a stern and hostile attitude towards Rome, towards the state, to begin with, but then began to accommodate themselves to the state, and Christianity did no harm to it. He should have said that people appeared, calling themselves Christians and living in harmony with the state – bishops and churchmen. But Christians both were, and still are, not just enemies of the state, but advocates of a doctrine incompatible with it. One of the most terrible and pernicious delusions is that people baptised by Constantine, Charlemagne or Vladimir are themselves Christians. There never were and never are Christian peoples, only Christian people, and such people can be found among Turks, Chinese and Indians. […]

18 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday Ilya arrived. Begrimed, hardened, and grown older without having been employed. I’ve done nothing. Liver still painful. Probably a fatal illness. It’s neither frightening nor disagreeable to me. Only I haven’t got used to it. I still want to work as I used to. Went to Yasenki. Pains began on the way. Tried to write. No good. In the evening I read Sienkiewicz.26  Very brilliant. Sonya came and started talking about the sale of new works,27 and I got angry. I’m ashamed.

19 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, went for a walk. Drank coffee, the pains began. Can’t write, although my thoughts seem clear while I’m thinking: no memory, no spark of life. An inspector came.28 I didn’t receive him, it was wrong of me. The inspector was a sort of policeman, carrying out a cross-examination. Masha had a narrow escape. They’ll close the school down, and I’m sorry for the girls. Ilya is here and I still can’t talk with him. I’d very much like to, but I haven’t been able to approach him, especially since he keeps aloof. Everything about him, his talk and his jokes, are seasoning for the essential thing which isn’t there. […]

Today is 25 March    In the morning I wrote a letter to Wagner who was distressed by The Fruits of Enlightenment,29 and then finished the Afterword. It’s weak, I think. Yesterday, the 24th, I received some letters: one from Wagner. In the morning I wrote little. In the evening I rode to Yasenki and Kozlovka. The day before yesterday, the 23rd, Sonya returned. I slept a lot. Did nothing. We read No Way Out‚30 and I read on my own. Felt worse. Lyova arrived. In a good mood. He wants to continue in the philological faculty. I had a talk with him. […]

27 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Had a walk and thought: […] (2) The displeasure of liberals and revolutionaries at the fact that people use their strength on Christian activities which seem to them so useless and even damaging to their aims, is like the displeasure a man might feel at ruining a fallow field by ploughing it up to grow corn. […]

28 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Went for a walk in the evening and prayed. Our Father, hallowed be Thy essence, love, that the kingdom of love may come; Thy will – that all should be ruled by love (by Thee) – be done here on earth as it is, I believe, in heaven. And give me life, i.e. a part in bringing this about here and now. And eliminate the consequences of my mistakes which could be a hindrance to me, just as I eliminate in my own consciousness the consequences of the mistakes of other people which are apparent to me, and which could hinder me from loving them. And lead me not into temptation – physical suffering, clouding of the mind, desire – which are obstacles to the realisation of love, and above all save me from the main obstacle within myself – from the evil in my own heart. Yes, only one thing is necessary for this life, and for all life, one thing – love – and its increase. […]

8 April, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Unwell. Couldn’t write. And so much needs doing. A letter from Chertkov. Wrote a few bad letters. While reading Lyova’s story,31 some thoughts occurred to me: the upbringing of children, i.e. the ruining of them, the egoism of parents, and hypocrisy. A story like Ivan Ilich.32 Yes, I thought: it’s not good to come and fill people’s rooms with smoke. But is it any better to come to joyful and happy people with a gloomy face and spoil their pleasure?

10 April, Yasnaya Polyana    Went for a walk, thought a lot yesterday and today, namely:

(1) One of the most audacious forms of disobedience to Christ is divine service, public prayers in churches, and calling the clergy ‘fathers’ – but see Matthew III, 5–15, John IV, 20, 21 and Matthew XXIII, 8.33

(2) To express in words what you understand so that another person will understand you as you do yourself is a very difficult thing: and you always feel that you are very, very far from having achieved what you can and should. And then to go and set yourself the further task of arranging the words in a definite order so far as metre and endings are concerned – surely that’s madness! But they are prepared to assure you that the words take shape of their own accord into ‘And love … stirs the blood’. A d’autres [Tell it to the marines]!

(3) The socialists say: ‘It’s not we, who enjoy the good things of civilisation and culture, who need to be deprived of these good things and reduced to the level of the vulgar crowd, but the people who have been deprived of their share of earthly goods need to be raised to our level and made to share the good things of civilisation and culture. The means for that is science. It teaches us to conquer nature, it can increase productivity endlessly, it can make Niagara falls, rivers and winds work for us by producing electricity. The sun will work for us. And there will be plenty of everything for everyone.’

Now only a small part of the people, the part which exercises authority, enjoys the good things of civilisation, while the great part is deprived of these good things. Increase the good things and then there will be enough for everyone. But the thing is that the people who exercise authority have for long been enjoying, not what they need but what they don’t need – everything that they can. And so however much the good things are increased, those who are at the top will use them all for themselves. One can’t use more than a certain quantity of what is necessary, but to luxury there are no limits. One can feed thousands of quarters of cereals to horses and dogs, convert millions of desyatins into parks, etc. And that’s what is happening. So no increase in productivity and wealth will increase the goods of the lower classes by one iota as long as the upper classes have both the power and the desire to use their surplus wealth on luxury. Quite the contrary, an increase in production, a greater and greater mastery of the forces of nature, gives more power to the upper classes, to those who are in authority – the power to hold on to all the good things and the authority they have over the lower, working classes. And every impulse on the part of the lower classes to force the rich to share things with them (revolutions, strikes) produces strife; and strife is a useless waste of wealth. ‘No one shall have anything if I can’t,’ say those engaged in strife.

The conquest of nature and the increase in the production of earthly goods in order to fill the world full of goods so that there should be enough for everyone, is just as senseless an act as increasing the quantity of logs and throwing them into a stove in order to increase the heat in a house in which the stoves are left open. However much you put in the stove, the cold air will be warmed and rise upwards, and fresh cold air will immediately take the place of the air that has risen, and there won’t be an even distribution of heat, or even any heat itself. As long as there is access for cold air, there will be an outlet for warm air which has the property of rising upwards. And it will be like that as long as there is a draught from below to above.

Up to now three remedies against this have been thought up, and it’s difficult to decide which of the three is more stupid: so stupid are all three. One remedy, that of the revolutionaries, consists in destroying the upper classes through whom all wealth escapes. This is like a man breaking a chimney pipe through which heat is escaping, thinking that if there is no chimney the heat won’t be able to escape. But the heat will escape through the hole, as it would through the chimney, if the draught is the same, just as wealth will escape back to the people who exercise authority, as long as their authority exists.

The second remedy consists in doing what Wilhelm II is now doing34 – taking a small part of the wealth away from the upper classes who have wealth and authority and throwing it into the bottomless pit of poverty, without changing the existing social order; fixing fans on top of the chimney which is drawing off the heat at the point where the heat is escaping, and waving these fans at the heat and forcing it back down to the cold layers. This is obviously an idle and useless occupation, because when the draught is coming upwards from below, however much you force the heat downwards (and you can’t force much of it), it will immediately escape again and all the work will be wasted.

And finally there is the third remedy, which is now being advocated with special force in America. This remedy consists in replacing the competitive, individual principle of economic life by a communal, artel, cooperative principle. The remedy, as it’s expressed in Dawn and Nationalist, is to advocate cooperation in word and deed – to suggest and explain to people that competition, individualism, and struggle waste much power and therefore much wealth, and that the cooperative principle is far more profitable, i.e. for each person to work for the common good, and then receive his own share of the common wealth. That way will be more profitable for everyone. That’s all very well, but the trouble is that in the first place nobody knows what portion each person will get, if everyone gets an equal share. But the main thing is that, whatever that portion might be, it will seem inadequate to people living as they do now for their own good. ‘Everyone will be all right, and you will be like everyone else.’ ‘But I don’t want to live like everyone else, I want to live better. I’ve always lived better than everyone else, and I’m used to it.’ ‘But I’ve lived worse than everyone else for a long time, and I want to live like the others lived.’ This remedy is the most stupid of all, because it presupposes that given the existing draught upwards from below, i.e. the motive for striving towards what is best, it is possible to induce particles of air not to rise higher as they get warmer.

There is only one remedy – to show people their true good, and the fact that wealth is not only not a good, but is a distraction which conceals from them what their true good is. Only one remedy exists – to block up the hole of worldly desires. Only that will give an even heat. And that is the very opposite of what the socialists say and do, by trying to increase productivity and therefore the general mass of wealth. […]

11, 12, 13 April, Yasnaya Polyana    The day before yesterday I wrote about narcotics again.35 Not bad. Yesterday: had some excellent thoughts in the morning and wrote them down in my notebook, but couldn’t write. Set off for Tula after dinner and went to the rehearsal.36 Very bored; the comedy is poor – trash. The day before yesterday, while talking with Stakhovich, I cursed the Tsar for having restored the death penalty. Got up late today, couldn’t write, stitched boots. Had a walk in the evening. Lyova is sad. Tanya is sweet. It’s now getting on for 1 o’clock. Thought: […]

(2) People say: thanks to the luxurious way of life of the upper classes, thanks to their leisure which is the result of the inequality of the classes, outstanding people appear on the scene, indifferent to the good things of the world, and with only spiritual interests. That’s just like saying that in a field trampled by cattle the surviving ears of corn are particularly good. It is the inevitable compensation which goes with every evil, and so cannot be used to justify the doing of evil.

(3) Orlov and many others say: ‘I believe, like a peasant.’ But the fact that he says this shows that he doesn’t believe like a peasant. A peasant says: ‘I believe, like the learned gentlemen, like the bishop.’

18 April    […] Thought for a future drama how peasants pretend that they believe, for their masters’ sake, and the masters pretend for the peasants’ sake. […]

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 April, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought during this time: (1) For the story Friedrichs. Before the suicide – a split mind: do I want to or not? I don’t‚ I see all the horror of it, and suddenly she is there in a red skirt, and everything is forgotten. Who wants to, who doesn’t? Where am I? Suffering caused by the split mind, and as a result – despair and suicide. […]

For the Afterword. If a man or woman falls, they must know that there is no other atonement for their sin except (1) to free themselves jointly from the temptations of the flesh or (2) to bring up their children as servants of God. […]

9 May, Pirogovo    Still ill. Not getting better. Thought today:
(1) Many of the ideas which I’ve been expressing recently don’t belong to me, but to people who feel an affinity with me, and turn to me with their problems, quandaries, ideas and plans. Thus the basic idea, or better to say, feeling of The Kreutzer Sonata belongs to a certain woman, a Slav,37 who wrote me a letter, comical for its language but remarkable for its content, about the oppression of women through sexual demands. Later she came to see me and left a strong impression. The idea that the verse in Matthew: ‘If you look on a woman with lust, etc.’ refers not only to other people’s wives but also to your own, was handed on to me by an Englishman who wrote about it.38 And there are so many other examples.
(2) There is an astonishing contrast between the attitudes of people to the two branches of knowledge: the one called moral teaching, religion even, and the one people like to call science. People who are far advanced in the first category of knowledge – moral teaching – for the most part take as their models teachers of the past: Mencius – Confucius; Plato – Socrates; Buddha – the Brahmins; Christ – Isaiah. These teachers always consider they know nothing themselves (Socrates said so directly). They consider their wisdom to have been handed on to them by their ancestors; their own they consider insignificant. A completely opposite view is taken by people of so-called science: they always think that nobody before them knew anything – that only now is science in the possession of, if not all, then a part of the truth which their predecessors never dared to dream of. If a man of science recalls how previous men of science looked at the universe, the organisation of the human body, the origin of the world and what fills it, etc. he is so sure that all his predecessors were wrong, but not he, that he cannot help despising all scientific activity except his own, and that of his own time. […]

11 May, Pirogovo    If I’m alive, there was a time when I began to think: am I not dying?, and I felt no fear, thank God. Only the fear that I might die a bad death.

Everybody needs a strict diet. A book is needed about food.39

18 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’ve been thinking all this time: […] (5) The anarchists are right about everything – the rejection of what exists and the assertion that anything worse than the oppression of authority, with its existing rights, would be impossible in the absence of that authority. They are only wrong in saying that anarchy can be established by revolution – that anarchy can be set up! Anarchy will be established; but only by there being more and more people who don’t need the protection of government authority, and more and more people who are ashamed to wield that authority. […] (10) We go on writing our novels, although not as crudely as before – when a villain was just a villain and Mr Dogood a do-gooder – but still terribly crudely and colourlessly. But people are all just the same as I am, i.e. skewbald – bad and good together – and not as good as I want people to consider me, or as bad as I think the people are whom I’m angry with or who have offended me. […]

20 May    A thought: we eat sauces, meat, sugar, sweets – we overeat and think nothing of it. It doesn’t even occur to us that it’s bad. And yet catarrh of the stomach is an epidemic of our way of life. Isn’t the same true of sweet aesthetic food – poems, novels, sonatas, operas, romances, pictures, statues? The same catarrh – of the brain. The inability to digest or even to take wholesome food, and the result – death. […]

[25 May.] […] 22 May    The same weakness. The foreword. Chistyakov came. All about the diaries. He, Chertkov, is afraid that I’ll die and the diaries will be lost. Nothing can be lost. But they can’t be sent – it would give offence. Masha has copied out the parts I marked.40 […]

1 June    […] Read M. Arnold. Method and secret.41 Secret is good. Wanted to read it to the girls.

2, 3‚ 4‚ 5, 6, 7, 8 June, Yasnaya Polyana    A whole week has passed. I’m in a very bad and gloomy frame of mind. […] Began Father Sergey and pondered over it. The whole interest is in the psychological stages which he goes through. […] An unpleasant talk today with Sonya apropos of a letter from Biryukov which Gay brought. (She was beside herself and gave herself full rein.)42 In The Newcomes43  Clive’s mother-in-law is good – she torments them both, only she is more tormented herself. Thought: (1) I avoid people, people are a nuisance to me. But surely you live only by people and only for them. If people are a nuisance to you there’s no point in living. To escape from people is suicide. […]

9, 10, 11‚ 12 June‚ Yasnaya Polyana    […] Masha wrote to Biryukov and approved of my letter to him.44 I was frightfully distressed by what Andryusha said today. I said to him that it was bad to drink strong coffee. He turned away with that familiar contempt the children have for me. Gay began to say it was for his own good. He said: ‘It’s not only about coffee, it’s about everything; surely one can’t do everything Papa says.’ He said just what all the children think. I’m terribly sorry for them. I dilute for them what their mother says. Their mother dilutes what I say. Whose fault is it? Mine. It’s now 11 in the morning, I want to get on with Koni’s story.

Tried to write, it was no good. Walked and drank kumys with Nikolay Nikolayevich the second. The cigarette-smoker Nikolay Nikolayevich45 is a burden. If he didn’t overeat and didn’t smoke, what a force he could be. Slept badly.

14 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Wrote a bit of Koni’s story. It doesn’t attract me. Corrected the proofs of the comedy. I’m well. Did some work, chopped wood and sawed.

17 June    Wrote a little bit. I need some material and must do some thinking. Drank an excessive amount of kumys. Talked with Strakhov. He’s almost always intoxicated.46 I’ve thought much and often in recent days, and prayed about something I’ve thought of hundreds and thousands of times, only differently – namely, that I would like to serve God by actually spreading his truth abroad, not in word but in deed, by sacrifice and the example of sacrifice; but nothing comes of it. He doesn’t let me. Instead of that, I live attached to my wife’s skirts, subservient to her, and I and all my children lead a squalid and ignoble life which I falsely justify on the grounds that I can’t destroy love. Instead of sacrifice and a triumphant example, a nasty, ignoble, pharisaical life which alienates me from Christ’s teaching. But Thou knowest what is in my heart and what I want. If that is not destined to be, if Thou dost not need me for Thy service, but only for dung, so be it according to Thy will. […]

Thought: (1) Strakhov and many others corrupted by spiritual onanism look at ethics from an aesthetic point of view: for him, morality is better than immorality only-or mainly-because it is more beautiful. […]

18 June    Thought while at work that I must begin Koni’s story with the court session; and the next day I added that I must express there and then the whole absurdity of the trial. […]

18 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. Didn’t even try to write. Mowed. Mitya Olsufyev came. He’s very feeble mentally. A letter from Seryozha with a request for money. Sonya is overcome by requests for money from her sons. It will get even worse. Surely it would be better if she were to renounce her literary possessions at least. How restful for her, how morally good for her sons and how joyful for me, how useful to men and pleasing to God. Strakhov.

22 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Many days have passed, five, I think. I don’t think I’ve written anything during this time. I’ll try and remember. […]
18. Mowed again. Strakhov – and I find him a burden. I’m very dejected. It’s not dejection in a mental sense – that’s nothing – but it’s to do with the heart, with love. I’m in low spirits and am angry. I sit here and am angry with people, both present and absent. Every word or thought arouses, not genuine feeling and sympathy for the person expressing it, but a desire to state to him what I believe to be true. It’s bad. Very bad. […]

At work, while mowing, I envisaged to myself the outer form of Koni’s story. Must begin with the court session. And then the falsehood of the law, and his need for truthfulness. And further: – the state: the story of the colonists.47

Worked a lot, mowed. Received Wilson’s splendid letter to Chertkov48 and Chertkov’s letter. Some other less interesting letters too. In the evening the American Stevens arrived on horseback after going round the world on a bicycle and being in Africa looking for Stanley.49 I’ve remembered to observe the practice of love, and spent the day well.

24 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Worked. Did no writing. Bestuzhev came, then Sisserman.50 Visitors are the bane of our life. Exercised self-restraint with Strakhov. Less anger.

Yesterday I read Without Dogma. Love for a woman is very delicately described – tenderly and far more delicately than with the French where it’s sensual, or the English where it’s pharisaical, or the Germans where it’s pompous – and I thought: I must write a novel about a love that is chaste and affectionate, like my love for Sonechka Kaloshina, the sort of love in which there can be no transition to sensuality, which is the best defence against sensuality. Is it not indeed the only salvation from sensuality? Yes, yes, it certainly is. That is why human beings were created man and woman. Only with a woman can one lose one’s chastity, and only with her can one retain it. Loss of chastity begins with the transition to sensuality. It would be good to write about it.

25 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Another thought: I ought to write a book Gluttony.51  Belshazzar’s feast, bishops, tsars and taverns. Meetings, partings, jubilees. People think they are occupied with various important matters, but they are only occupied with gluttony. And what goes on behind the scenes? How do they prepare for it?

Yesterday Holzapfel52 left. The children jumped out of bed earlier than usual, and Andryusha was going to set off for the village. I asked him why. To buy eggs. Why? Mamma told me to. And I thought: who is looking after their upbringing? A woman without convictions, weak, good, but journalière [inconstant], fickle, and exhausted by the unnecessary cares taken upon herself. She torments herself, and the children are being ruined before my eyes, piling up sufferings for themselves which will be millstones round their necks. Am I right to allow it without waging a struggle? I pray, and I see that I can’t do otherwise. Not my will, but Thine. On the one hand the ruin of the children and vain sufferings, on the other – struggle and bitterness. Better let it be the first. The second is certain, the first isn’t. It’s not for my own family that I was born and must live, but for God. […]

1 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Another thought: Katerina is dying while the mowing is going on. An insignificant event from the mowers’ point of view. The hay has been gathered in safely. Of what importance is that event from the point of view of the dying and the dead Katerina?

Another thought: it would be good to write a story of a man who is kind, tender, gentle, amiable, educated, clever, but who lives like a master, i.e. who guzzles and s   ts, and so requires people to slaughter chickens for him, coachmen to do without sleep and workmen to clean out the lavatories. It’s impossible to be a good man when you live the wrong sort of life.

3 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Went downstairs to sleep. Got up late. Depressed and bored; idleness, luxurious living, useless talk. It’s as if cog wheels are swimming in grease, get clogged and won’t engage. Sometimes the wheels don’t go for lack of oil, sometimes because they are full of slush. Should one write for people like that? Why? I’ve a strange reluctance to write. Yesterday I thought vividly about women. A woman holiday-maker came to question me when I was mowing. The main feature about women is their lack of respect for thought, lack of trust in what it – thought – will lead to. Hence falsehood, distortion of the truth, making play with ideas and spiritual gifts generally. If men were not so bound to women by sexual feeling and the indulgence which results from it, they would see clearly that women (for the most part) don’t understand them, and they wouldn’t talk to them. Except for virgins. You begin to get to know women from you wife, and you get to know them completely from your daughters. These are the women whom you can look at quite freely.

Mowed a lot. Still the same melancholy.

4 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. I’m drinking too much kumys. Wrote nothing. Mowed all day. It’s the one salvation. Articles and letters all about the Afterword and The Kreutzer Sonata. It’s astonishing what contempt there is for the word, what abuse of it! It’s the same with the women’s conversations that go on all round me. The lower the subject of these conversations the better. At least it’s sincere about eyes and paws. But the higher the subject, the less sincere. […] It’s very important for a woman that there should be more or less sugar or money, but that there should be more or less truth, she is sincerely convinced is of no importance at all.

I suffer from the fact that I’m surrounded by people with deformed brains, with such self-assured, ready-made theories that it’s folly to write anything for them; there’s no way of getting through to them at all. […]

5 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up in good spirits, although didn’t sleep much. Found Mme Helbig53 and Strakhov talking about whether one can purify everything by love, without changing one’s life. I joined in and spoke warmly, the more so since the young people had arrived. But of course I convinced nobody. The place I’m aiming at is too tender, and so they protect it carefully, promptly and opportunely, as the eyelid the eye.

Thought: I like Schiller’s Raüber so much because it’s profoundly true and accurate. A man such as a thief or a robber who takes away the fruits of another man’s labour knows he is doing wrong; but a man who takes them away by lawful means which are acknowledged by society, doesn’t acknowledge his life to be bad, and so this honest citizen is incomparably worse morally than the robber. […]

6 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Went to watch the harvesting of the rye. In the evening I’ll go and cut the rye. In the morning I argued again with Helbig about art. Cleared up one or two things for myself in this argument: (1) Art is one of the means of distinguishing good from evil – one of the means of recognising the good. (2) It is one of the spiritual functions of mankind, just as feeding, means of communicating, etc. are physical functions. (3) How is it that this function should have been sought 5,000 or 500 years ago, and yet not be found in our own time? (4) Obviously it is because of the stupidity of the critics, who cannot see a new phenomenon all round them, but only see corpses of the past.

Had a rest, walked through Masha’s room. Sonya had read in her diary there about Posha’s letter and was beside herself. I couldn’t console her. She’s ill all the time and afraid of being pregnant. And I think of it with fear and am ashamed of myself. This is where I need to face God, not people. Yes, just as illness is necessary to kill sexual desire, so are humiliation and shame necessary to kill vanity.

Harvested the hay. Then the Zinovyevs came. I feel depressed with dead people. And they are so consciously, deliberately dead. Slept badly in the evening.

10 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Still just as weak. Sonya is distressed by the fear of being pregnant. This is where the attempt must be made to transfer the case to the court of the one God.

Went for a bathe. Came back; the table was set for thirty people. The Ofrosimovs and Figners. Then music and singing. Terrible, pointless, it got on my nerves. Two pathetic machines and trumpets – people eating and making a nasty smell. Couldn’t sleep till 5. Very unwell. Sonya in distress and in low spirits.

11 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Offended Strakhov. […] In the evening an argument with Strakhov about the Russian question. ‘One of two things: Slavophilism or the Gospels.’ We are going through that terrible time that Herzen spoke about. Ghenghis Khan, no longer with telegraphs, but with telephones and smokeless powder. A constitution, certain forms of freedom of the press, assembly and religious beliefs are all brakes on the increase of power as a consequence of telephones, etc. Without them something terrible is happening, and something that is only true of Russia.

Slept better.

13 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Had a good night’s sleep. After coffee I got on with Father Sergey. Not bad. But it’s not right. I must begin with the loose woman’s journey. Then stitiched boots. Went for a walk and a bathe. In the evening more stitching. Proofs of the article from Goltsev.54 I must add something. […]

15 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. After coffee I set to work at once on the boots; finished them and went for a bathe. After dinner I had a nap. Sonya came with the news that she wasn’t pregnant. I said we must sleep separately and that I didn’t like that. What will happen? Was cross with Seryozha, but things are better now. I’m not angry at all with Sonya. Nor should I be. Walked a lot in the evening. A cook came, whom a doctor had sent to me from Moscow to ask my advice about his wife’s unfaithfulness. He’s obviously on the verge of mental illness. Hears sounds behind the wall and thinks they are signs being made by her lover and her. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I wanted to be a pure gentleman.’ He writes illiterate poetry and weeps at every word. Suffers from hallucinations. A strange and significant type. It’s now gone 10.

20 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Had a talk with Sonya. She said she’s glad. But she doesn’t want to sleep separately. […] The Sissermans were just about to arrive some time after 2. The conversation turned to Verochka Kuzminskaya grumbling at her father for not giving her her aunt’s money. Sonya began to talk about how her children demanded the same thing, how there were quarrels over money. I began to say that it was all to do with the need for money. If there’s a need, then by hook or by crook they will get the money, but it can’t be got otherwise than by sinning, because acquiring it is a sin. Nobody listened to me, and everyone was cross with me for talking such nonsense or uttering truisms. At which point the Sissermans arrived, and everyone was cross.

Today is the 24th. Löwenfeld came,55 he’s writing a biography of me. Unpleasant titillation. Walked about and thought and prayed.
21. […] Thought about my old diaries, about how disgusting I appear in them, and about how I don’t want people to know them – i.e. I’m concerned about worldly fame even after my death. How terribly difficult it is to renounce worldly fame, not to be concerned about it at all. And not to suffer at the thought of being taken for a scoundrel. Difficult, but how good! How joyful when you cast aside your concern for worldy fame, and fall at once into God’s hands, and how easy and secure you feel. It’s like the boy who fell into a well and hung on by his hands, suffering pain, when he had only got to stop holding on and he would have stood on the firm ground right beneath his feet, would have fallen into God’s hands. […]

25 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again about the main difference between men and women: for men reason is a motive force, for women reason is the sequel to movement. Women and women’s minds play with reason, but are moved by inertia and the desires of the flesh; men – real men – control inertia and the desires of the flesh by reason.

I’m writing very badly. I’m not thinking clearly. I’m unwell. […]

27 July,    […] The people who have the most success are those who are not ashamed to do the most stupid things with solemn pretentiousness. Thought about this when recalling how Zakharin was saying that in their clinics they direct a stream of water on to people’s bellies to aid digestion. […]

28 July‚ Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Went for a bathe with Pastukhov.56 Corrected the translations of Garrison and Ballou and wrote a short foreword,57 so that they can be communicated to people in this form. […]

3 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again: what a bad mistake I make in entering into conversations about Christianity with Orthodox believers, or talking about Christianity apropos of the activity of priests, monks, the Synod, etc. Orthodoxy and Christianity have only the name in common. If churchmen are Christians, then I’m not a Christian, and vice versa. […]

4 August, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive.

Alive, Got up early, had a bathe. Prayed. Had some good thoughts about Father Sergey, noted them down and lost the notebook. Read Urusov’s article,58 did some translating with Tanya, repaired some boots and drove to a fire at Kolpna. […]

5 August In the morning I felt ill, stayed in bed and read a Danish novel Sin.59  Bad. Went for a bathe; over dinner we saw a fire in Yasnaya. Five houses burned down. […]

6 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Went for a bathe, and from there to the fire: people came from the mill. I began to console Andrian and went up to Morozov to console him, and felt depressed myself. Sonya was there with money. I was very glad. […] Found my notebook.

I’d made a note for Father Sergey. She explains her reason for coming, talks nonsense, and he believes it because she’s beautiful. She is full of desire.

He doesn’t see anything great about it, on the contrary he’s ashamed at having succumbed. Eventually she goes into a monastery. He’s not handsome, just an ordinary face, plucks at his beard, but his eyes … that’s what arouses her. […]

7 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought again: questions of a life after death. Why don’t we know what will happen to us? Even now, when we don’t know, we’re inclined to depise this life for the sake of the future one, so what would happen if we did know? It wouldn’t have been possible to reveal to us what would happen to us after death: if we knew something bad was in store for us, there would be additional suffering; if we knew something good was in store for us, we wouldn’t go on living here, but would try to die. Only if we knew there was nothing there would we live happily here. That’s almost the way it is. The most probable assumption is that there is no life of the sort we can express by means of our instruments of thought and speech. […]

There’s a splendid story in Vasily Ivanovich’s letter about a good peasant who, when asked by the priest at confession, ‘Do you believe in God?’ replied: ‘No, I don’t: I drink, and smoke and swear.’ Delightful. […]

10 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] For Father Sergey. I must describe the new state of happiness – the freedom, the security of a man who has lost everything, and can’t lean on anything but God. For the first time he gets to know how secure that support is.

11 August    Alive. Got up early. A depressing, painful feeling caused by the presence of guests. I had a talk with Rugin. They want to go off to Bulygin’s,60 and here they are sitting here, although it’s 11 o’clock. And instead of my telling them, I get angry. Went for a bathe, but didn’t bathe. Thought.

For Father Sergey. In the monastery he succumbed to the pride of holiness when with the general and the abbot – and fell. In his cell he repents and has recovered when the loose woman comes.

14 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] For Father Sergey. When he falls, he sees ugly faces. Ugly plump faces, and he thinks they’re devils. […]

15 August61    […] I got up very late. Went for a bathe. Prayed and thought. Drank coffee and talked frankly with Sonya for almost the first time for many years. She spoke about prayer sincerely and intelligently – namely that prayer ought to be expressed in deeds, and not by people saying: ‘Lord, Lord.’ And she remembered Rugin. I was very glad. In the morning during my walk I was even more glad when I felt able to forget myself to the extent of not thinking about my own future life, but only of doing God’s work, and taking part in it. […]

15 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Yes, some articles yesterday about The Kreutzer Sonata. Scandal in America and abuse from Nikanor.62 I didn’t find it unpleasant. […]

18 August    Alive. Morning as usual. Very sleepy.

For Father Sergey. A detail which should establish a level of reality. The lawyer inhales the drops from his running nose in the frosty weather. And he smells of perfume and tobacco, and bad breath.

This story gets a deeper and deeper hold on me. The temptation of worldy fame and celebrity – i.e. a delusion for the purpose of concealing one’s faith. […]

20 August, Pirogovo    Got up late, weak, read Ibsen’s Wilde Ente.63 Not good. Seryozha is very worried about his losses. I left on horseback at 6. A splendid ride. Prayed joyfully. I think it gives me strength. […]

21 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, tidied my room, had a bathe, revised the conclusion. Read Ibsen’s Rosmersholm. Not bad so far. It’s now gone 2. I’ll go for a rest.

After dinner I chopped wood on my own. Very depressed about the absurdity of life.

22 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Early; everything as usual. Prayer comforts me. A good letter from Chertkov. Rugin came. Had a very good talk with him. Sonya was awake and received him with composure, but then Ilya upset her by saying that he couldn’t eat in his presence. Sonya behaved very well. She didn’t do what she should have done, but she endeavoured with love to do her best. And how I valued that. And how glad I was. I was feeling depressed. She told him so. He took it well, like a peasant and a Christian, and left. The egoism and dissoluteness of our life, of all our lives, the guests included, frighten me. It seems to me to be getting worse all the time. There must be an end to it soon. In the evening Stakhovich and the Zinovyevs came. […]

23 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Still the same oppressive heat. Still I don’t cease to pray. And that makes me so glad. Wrote three empty letters yesterday – to the Chertkovs, Gay and someone else. Still the same fuss and bother, the same cruelty of life, the same stupidity. Terrible, enormous temptations ensnare them. I thought there would be some solution. It can’t go on like this. A terrible surfeit and intensity of the life of the flesh. […]

27 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. My first impression – some peasants from Kutma. A meeting of justices of the peace had upheld the decision of a judge to imprison two women for tearing up grass. It affected me terribly deeply. This gang of robbers – judges, ministers, tsars – destroy people in order to get money. And without any conscience. Then I received 20th Century, an anarchist journal – excellent. […]

All evening with the Stakhoviches. Not only bored but ashamed – they are so remote from me; but on the other hand, thank God, I didn’t once lose control of myself, despite the rubbish talked by M. Stakhovich and the others. Lyova came, and told me about the conflict brewing between Seryozha and Ilya. Materialism. Here we have the men of the 80s.

28 August, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s my sixty-third year. I felt ashamed that because 1890 ÷ 63 = 30 and because I’ve been married 28 years – that these figures seemed to me in some way significant and I had been looking forward to this year as an important one. Got up late. First impression a depressing one – that of a peasant woman who had come to fetch her horse, which had been taken from her again to get kumys. And yet I was unjust and angry. I was told yesterday that Bulygin’s house had burned down. I went over to see him. On the way I prayed, and partly resigned myself. Prayer fortifies me and continues to be of unabating importance. Bulygin’s house hadn’t burned down, but fourteen houses in Khatunka had. Came back. And I can’t get rid of my feeling of anger with the children. I’ve felt it the whole time. And it’s as if something has happened between me and them. Read Björnson64 – good, very tragic. Fell asleep. It’s now 5 o’clock, I’m going to have dinner.

Thought: Masha told me how Lyova and Stakhovich were saying that one shouldn’t mix philanthropy with estate management: ‘In estate management justice rules, but philanthropy is something quite different.’ People talk like that with the conviction that it’s clever and nice, but in fact it’s nothing else but marking out for yourself an arbitrary field in which you rid yourself in advance of all human feeling, and in which you allow yourself to be cruel. This is how people talk about military service, discipline, the state. What an excellent work of art could be written on this theme! And how necessary! And how I would like to do it.

Thought again: most good feelings and thoughts are not feelings and thoughts. On the contrary, something good excites you: compassion, or the awareness of being in the wrong and the wish to help to explain; and this good aspiration turns either into indignation, resentment and censure, or else into vain arguments paraded in front of people – idle chatter – and its force disappears without having achieved anything. One mustn’t let this feeling escape, one must lock it up like steam or water and release it only into a piston and on to a wheel.

Someone is coming. Help me, Father!

It was the mail coach from Tula. An abusive letter from America.65 Why did I write those rude things about doctors? I’m unhappy with the older children. Worries about money and organising their lives; and self-assurance and absolute self-satisfaction. I haven’t much love for them. And I can’t summon up more. Went for a walk to Kozlovka. Sonya complained about our sons.

3 September    […] Thought today: I’m angry at the moral obtuseness of the children except for Masha. But who are they? My children, my own creation from every aspect, carnal and spiritual. I made them what they are. They are my sins – always before me. And there’s nowhere for me to go to escape from them, it’s impossible. I must enlighten them, but I can’t do it, I’m bad myself. […]

6 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything as usual. A pain in the pit of my stomach – apathy. I sleep. And I have evil thoughts. But I stand firm and pray. Chopped wood, went for a walk late on and took a letter for Sonya66 to Kozlovka. It’s now gone 10, I’m going to have a drink of tea. Yesterday I read Rousseau’s Émile.67 Yes, I’ve managed my family life badly. And this sin lies upon me and all around me. In the morning I was summoned to the meeting. I went and tried to mediate. It seems it wasn’t in vain. […]

13 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, went to saw and chop wood with Masha. Very tired. Sat down at home and was at once aware of my feebleness again. Was sad – and sad that I was sad. If I’d remembered – humility, obedience and love – I wouldn’t have been sad. A pain in the pit of my stomach all morning. Read Coleridge.68 A writer very sympathetic to me – precise, clear, but unfortunately timid – an Englishman – the Church of England and redemption. Impossible. […]

Thought yesterday about the fact that war (everyone is talking about sending troops to the Prussian frontier and about war) isn’t so dreadful in the sense that either bloodthirsty beasts or animals that roam in herds will be fighting, and that if they slaughter each other there will be fewer of them left – and I said so. How they attacked me! But it is so. To express it exactly, one should say: people, unfortunately, only learn from experience – and so they need the experience of the calamity of war. That’s one thing. But the other thing is that people who are on the level where they can kill each other at somebody’s command aren’t to be pitied, as reasonable people would be. That’s a consolation. […]

Thought yesterday: I walk through the village and see various peasants digging. Each one digs a potato trench for himself and each one roofs his own house, and much else of the same sort. How much unnecessary work! What if all this were done together and shared? It wouldn’t seem to be difficult: bees and ants and beavers do it. But it is very difficult. Man is very far from doing it precisely because he is a reasonable, conscious creature. Man has to do consciously what animals do unconsciously. Before man aims at the communal life of bees and ants, he must first consciously try to reach the level of cattle, from which he is still a long way away: not fight (wage war) over absurdities, not overeat, not fornicate, and then he can consciously aim at the life of the bees and ants as they are beginning to do in the communes. First the family, then the commune, then the state, then mankind, then all living creatures, then the whole world, like God. […]

14 September    Alive. Still the same mood of depression. Couldn’t work. Pavel Boriskin and Alexey were netting a bird-cherry tree. I helped them a bit. Read Coleridge. Much that is excellent. But he suffers from the English disease. It’s clear that he can think clearly, freely and powerfully; but as soon as he touches on anything that is respected in England, he becomes a sophist without noticing it. Read to the girls. […]

15 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything as usual. Didn’t try to write. Was told in the morning that Pavel had died. He lay down in Alexey’s shed on some rotten straw and died. Good. Patience. I’d like to write something with the epigraph: ‘I came to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?’69 […]

19 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Unwell. Read. Chopped wood. Rugin came. I walked back with him. How inaccessible peasants are to the teaching of the truth. They are so full of their own interests and habits. But who is accessible? The one whom the Father leads to it – a secret. Read Pressensé.70 How insignificant! […]

It’s now 12 o’clock. I’d like to write a novel de longue haleine [on a big scale] in the evenings.

4 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Tanya’s birthday. In the meantime I’ve read Father Mamonov’s article on the Slavophiles71 – excellent. Then Broglie’s book on Constantine72 which Lyova brought, very useful – I’ll copy out some extracts from it now – then Ivantsov’s book on heresies and schisms.73 Scientific twaddle. Then Björnson’s book In God’s Way74 which was sent to me. Serious, with a purpose, very talented in places, but also ungainly, with much that is superfluous and disjointed. I don’t know how to put it. […]

6 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Woke up early and thought with gladness about the need to write down the whole sober truth about what is considered to be belief, the madness which is accepted and repeated: redemption, the creation, the sacraments, the Church, etc. I imagined it very clearly, but not the form of it. Of course something literary would be more powerful than anything.75 Read the Revue; wanted to write but couldn’t. I’m a bit better. […]

7 and 8 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: (1) The usual argument to the effect that the working classes are free to work or not, to educate themselves and to move up into the higher strata of society, reminds me of the question by the young lady who asked why, if the peasants have no bread, they don’t eat pies? Such is the failure to understand not only reality, but even the subject under discussion. […]

14 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Got on yesterday with a conclusion to Ballou, and I’m continuing it today for the first time with enthusiasm. It looks as if it will get finished now. The day before yesterday Doctor Bogomolets came, and he and I translated Diana,76 a very good article on the sexual question. Yesterday I wrote it out and revised it today during a sitting with Gay.77 Yesterday a nice young girl came. She was aware of the emptiness of life, but didn’t know that one can’t live without faith. Masha is fixing her up here for a while, in the village. A good letter from Novosyolov. There are many letters to answer.

15 October, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive. […] terrible to say – 23 October. Eight days. My only occupations during these days were writing out Diana, revising an article on hunting,78 and a story by Guy de Maupassant79 – a wonderful story which Alexey Mitrofanovich translated. Got on yesterday with Sergey. I’ve made some progress. My thoughts are sluggish. Today I only made notes to remind me. Gay is still sculpting. Sonya has gone away today to her sons. Morally I’m at a low ebb. […] Health just about holding up with great care. I’ll soon die. […]

24 October.    […] In the morning I revised and wrote down the stories by Guy de Maupassant80 while sitting for Gay. After that I couldn’t write. In the evening I read a history of the church with the girls. Don’t remember whether I noted down: We can’t know anything of what is, but we can know for sure what ought to be. There are many different sorts of knowledge, but the one which is the most important and reliable of all is the knowledge of how to live. But it’s just this knowledge which is despised and considered both unimportant and unreliable.

12 o’clock. I’m going to bed. I’m sad. The one joyful thing is that I feel the very best kind of love for Sonya. Her character is only now becoming clear to me.

26 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early. Revised Maupassant again and didn’t manage to write anything. I was wrong to praise him the day before yesterday. Such restlessness, agitation and fuss and bother, that I get depressed. Generally speaking I’m in low spirits. I’m glad to be with Lyova. He’s struggling against the desires of the flesh and seems about to succumb. In the evening read Pisemsky’s drama A Hard Lot.81 Not good.

Yes, it would be good to express the teaching of Christ’s life as I understand it now. […]

Haven’t written my diary for threee days. Today is 31 October, Yasnaya Polyana. Got up early today – before 7, as on all these days – and went for a walk. Prayer continues to fortify me and get me going. New thoughts arise, get more involved and then become clearer. Then I did some writing – since my notebooks are locked up with Masha, I got on at first with Sergey. Revised some bits, but mainly got things clearer in my own mind. I must relate everything that was in his soul: why and how he became a monk. Great pride (Kuzminsky and Urusov), ambition and the need to be beyond reproach. Had a sleep. Went for a walk, prayed again. Dictated a letter to Tanya, read Trinksitten,82 and now it’s 8 o’clock.

Yesterday, 30 October, Yasnaya Polyana. […] The Diana article has been published.83 I somehow fear for it. And that’s bad. It’s proof that I didn’t do it entirely for other people’s sake. […]

7 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up early, had a walk. A keen frost. Continued writing just as badly.84 I sometimes think that I’ve lost the power and ability to express my thoughts as I expressed them before, and so I’m dissatisfied with their feeble expression now. I must give up. It’s not important. I’m not sorry. And things are very good as they are. (Prayer fortifies and purifies me, it makes me glad.) But doubts trouble me: perhaps I ought to write. And so I try, and will go on trying, to serve people in this way, since I don’t know any other way of serving them so usefully. […]

9 November    […] Tanya brought the letters, including one from Gaydeburov with abusive articles85 which had an effect on me. How far I still am from rejoicing, as the Gospel says, when men revile you. […]

16 November    […] Did some writing today to begin with. Started with my impressions following the publication of What I Believe. So far it’s going smoothly.

Yesterday, 15 November. […] I wrote some more about oppression. Thought: For my article on non-resistance. The lower working classes are always full of hate, and are only waiting for the opportunity to vent the anger boiling up inside them, but the ruling classes are now on top. They lie on the workers and can’t let them go: if they let them go, that will be the end of them. All the rest is a game and a comedy; the essence of the matter is a life and death struggle. Like robbers, they guard their prey and defend it from other people.

18 November    This was yesterday. Wrote about non-resistance to evil to begin with. I think I’ve now found the form. Although it’s not a very good one, it’s one into which I can fit much that is good. I’ll try not to change it and not to depart from it. Wrote quite well; had a headache. Slept very badly. And was terribly depressed. Walked to Kozlovka. A letter from Yemelyan. In the evening I read Homer to the girls. […]

Thought about the corruptness of the newspapers: read in The Week an account of my story in the Fortnightly Review,86 where it says that the young man went off with her and that was the end of it, and that the whole story is written on the theme of married life. Of course I know it’s all nonsense, but then 0.99 of news and information is the same sort of nonsense which nobody corrects – there’s no time: tomorrow there will be fresh news and one mustn’t miss the dead-line – the month’s, the week’s, or the day’s. One must think with the dead-line in view. It’s really surprising how strong the devil is, i.e this retrograde force. A thought is only a thought and fruitful when it isn’t bound by anything: that is its strength compared with other things of the flesh. But no. They’ve gone and shackled it in bonds of time, in order to emasculate it and deprive it of its individuality. And it’s just this emasculated form that is eager to devour everything. Philosophers and sages express their thoughts for the first of the month, and prophets too. […]

Thought for my article on non-resistance: the critics of my book87 attacked the metaphysics and said nothing about the moral teaching. It’s just the same with all opinions about heresies: people tell you in detail how the Montanists and others made such and such a wrong judgement about divinity (probably describing the teaching of the Montanists and others just as correctly as missionaries described the teaching of Buddhists), and then say in two words that they lived morally without resorting to violence.

19 November. Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive. For the 18th. I’m thinking very vividly about the article on non-resistance. It’s all becoming clear. I also want to write something free, something literary. But I won’t allow myself to until I’ve finished this.

Today, 21 November, Yasnaya Polyana. It’s getting on for 12 o’clock at night. Sonya has gone to Moscow. I read The Odyssey with the girls. […]

Before dinner I had a sleep, walked along the main road and wrote quite a lot about religious critics.88 Yesterday, the 20th. In the evening I read, soled some felt boots and was very tired. In the morning I walked to the office and wrote quite a lot about secular critics. […]

22 November, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive.

Yes, for the article: secular critics are moral eunuchs whose moral nerve has been removed, the consciousness that they can create life by their own power.

And again – the Church is a curtain which conceals the door of salvation opened by Christ. People can’t see it, and rush about in desperation.

23 November, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday and today I lived and wrote and prayed like a clock that had been wound up. Wrote a lot. Switched over to the church theme89 and am making good progress. […]
Yesterday, the 27th, at Krapivna. Got up very early, went for a walk, went to the police station and then to the gaol. Tried again to persuade the accused to be unanimous; we drank coffee and then I went to court. Heat and a shameful comedy. But I noted down what I needed for a realistic scene.90 Then we travelled back by night. A snowstorm, it was frightening. Arrived safely.

Today, 15 December. Haven’t written my diary for eleven days. Lived roughly the same: walked and prayed just the same, and made the same slow progress in writing my article. Visitors: (1) Rusanov and Boulanger.91 Left behind a very joyous impression. Then Anatoly and Andrey Butkevich.92 News that a policeman was coming to see me about the dispatch of some hectographed articles by Butkevich. Then Anatoly Butkevich and his wife. Very good and joyous people. Before them too, an old man, Panov, a coachmaker from Samara, an Orthodox renegade, an original, free-thinking Christian. Too occupied with negation. Then Dillon.93 He only left today. I was depressed, partly because I felt I was material for him to write about. But intelligent, and apparently with newly-awakened interest in religion. I’ve just seen Bulygin off. I must help him spiritually, and I tried as best I could. Went out this morning and was met by Ilya Bolkhin begging for forgiveness: they’ve been sentenced to six weeks in gaol.94 I was very depressed and my heart ached all day. Prayed, and will pray and go on praying that God will help me not to destroy my feeling of love. I must go away. Forgot to make a note of a dear and wonderful visitor – Posha. He’s very good, serene, open, truthful and pure, and so is Masha, and I’m glad. Thought during this time: […] (2) Thanks to the censors all our literary activity is an idle occupation. The only thing that is necessary and that justifies this activity (literature) is cut out and thrown away by the censors. It’s as though a carpenter were only allowed to plane in such a way that there should be no shavings. And writers are wrong to think that they can deceive the government censors. It’s impossible to deceive them, just as it’s impossible to deceive a man on whom you want to put a mustard-plaster surreptitiously without his knowledge. As soon as it begins to take effect, he will tear it off. […]
(4) From various directions, both in my life and in my writings, I’m coming more and more often to the idea that people think for the most part – in as much as they are not saints – not in order to discover the truth, but only to justify and extol themselves. Only a saint can think altogether rightly, and only the thoughts of a saint are fruitful. […]

Did some writing today – not much, but I’m apparently making progress. Yesterday I began Koni’s story from the beginning.95 Enjoyed writing it very much.

16 December, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I went to bed and couldn’t sleep. My heart ached, and above all I felt loathsome self-pity, and anger against her. An astonishing condition! And with it all, nervous excitement and clarity of thought. With these stresses and strains I could write something splendid. Got out of bed at 2 and went into the drawing-room to walk about. She came out and we talked till after 4. The same as usual. A bit gentler on my part. Spoke my mind about one or two things. I think I must declare to the government that I don’t recognise property and royalties, and let them do what they will. […]

Still can’t adopt a simple, kindly, affectionate tone, not just with her, but with any of them. That’s proof that I’m to blame. My last words yesterday were: ‘don’t judge me; I judge myself for not being affectionate enough – you try and find the same judgement in yourself.’ […]

21 December    Got up very early. Was woken by a telegram. Sonya96 has had a son. Did some writing. Still about the Church, and still making slow progress. […]

25 December    8 o’clock in the evening. They’ve just been doing the Christmas tree. I sat downstairs and read Renan. Remarkably clever. Before dinner I went for a walk, had a sleep and asked Lyova’s forgiveness for having offended him. During tea, with Dunayev present, a conversation began about our way of life and the times of repas; he blamed his mother, and I said that he was just the same as she was. He said that everyone said (and this was the astonishing thing) that there was no difference between Masha, Chertkov and himself, and I said that he didn’t even understand what it was all about, – said that he knew nothing about humility or love, and mistook hygienic concerns for moral ones. He got up with tears in his eyes and went out. I was very hurt and sorry for him, and ashamed. And I felt love for him. Spoke to him, but was sorry it had happened. And so did no writing. Slept badly all night. […]

These last days I’ve been receiving abusive letters. The Yasnaya Polyana Tartuffe. Was hurt at first and then felt good. Good letters from the Shakers. […]

26 December    Got up early. Asked Vasya to tidy my room. And when I came back after coffee and it wasn’t done, was shamefully offended and angry. Pride! Abomination. I’m still writing about the Church. Seem to have made progress. But not much.

In the morning I wrote down: the Church, by teaching people to know the truth and not do it, has atrophied their moral nerve.

Read S. Prudhomme’s article on Pascal’s wager.97 It’s now 12, I’m going to bed. I’d like to write something literary. […]

Today is the 31st. Evening. 11 o’clock. Got up early in the morning. Wrote a lot. Revised what I’d already done, three chapters are almost ready and it’s all taking shape.98 Went for a long walk. In the evening we read a splendid article by Leskov.99 A letter from Chertkov and the articles on art.100 Wrote letters to him and Leskov.

Well now. 1891, January 1, if I’m alive. I’ve kept waiting for something to happen while I’m still sixty-three – which goes thirty times into 1890. Nothing has happened.101 As if I didn’t know that anything that can happen from without is nothing compared with what can happen within.

Notes

1 The Fruits of Enlightenment.

2 I have corrected Tolstoy’s Greek.

3 Tolstoy gives the quotation from Emerson in English.

4 The three sons of I. I. Rayevsky, an old friend of Tolstoy’s with whom he later stayed at Begichevka while engaged on famine relief in 1891–2.

5 The school opened by Masha in a gardener’s cottage near the entrance to the Yasnaya Polyana estate for the education of the local children. Tolstoy sometimes taught there, as well as his other daughter Tatyana.

6 Andrey S. Butkevich, a medical student at Moscow University and later a doctor in Moscow who came under Tolstoy’s spell for a time and later wrote memoirs of an ‘ex-Tolstoyan’.

7 Privately in Petersburg and by the Freie Bühne society in Berlin.

8 What is Truth?, which Tolstoy advised Tretyakov to buy.

9 At the time Chertkov was in a highly excited and nervous state, which was the subject of correspondence between him and Tolstoy.

10 S. M. Dolgov translated Alice Bunker Stockham’s popular book on childbirth, Tokology. A Book for Every Woman. Tolstoy, at Dolgov’s request, wrote a foreword to it.

11 Tolstoy told M. M. Shishkina, his brother Sergey’s wife, his first thoughts about Father Sergey to which the following lines refer. The thoughts are so condensed that the meaning is difficult to follow in places, particularly since it is not always clear who is speaking. The final version of the story is substantially different.

12 Possibly The Light Shineth in Darkness, which he sometimes called ‘his own’ drama.

13 N. N. Gay junior. Part of the letter concerns Tolstoy’s admission that he sometimes acts against his conscience in order to avoid some unpleasantness in the family.

14 In French in the diary.

15 An article in the American (not English) journal Rising Star by F. W. Evans, Elder of the New York Shakers, using the occasion of the centenary celebrations in 1887 to advocate Shaker politics.

16 Tolstoy began an article Apropos of the Skublinskaya [not Kublinskaya] Case on reading of the murders of new-born babies perpetrated by a Warsaw midwife of that name.

17 An article on the Decembrist Y. P. Obolensky, with some unpublished letters.

18 Tolstoy visited the Optina Monastery with his sister (Mashenka) who was living temporarily in a nunnery nearby. Her decision to become a nun was apparently taken under the influence of the Optina Elder Amvrosy.

19 Boris Shidlovsky, a cousin of Sonya’s and a monk at the monastery.

20 K. N. Leontyev, novelist and critic, who was living at the monastery at the time and became a monk shortly before his death. His major work, On the Novels of L. N. Tolstoy, was written in 1890, but not published until 1911.

21 This sentence from the article (in the first issue of the American journal) as well as the words ‘Christ in business’ and ‘Christ in kicking or killing’ appear in English in the diary.

22 It is not known what he was reading.

23 Respectively the ultra-conservative Chief Procuractor of the Holy Synod; an archbishop who had frequently spoken against Tolstoy; and a literary historian who was highly critical of his work, especially Anna Karenina.

24 Practical Philanthropy in England, in the Herald of Europe.

25 The French classical historian’s article Études d’histoire réligieuse which Tolstoy read in the Revue des Deux Mondes and alluded to in the first draft of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

26 The Polish novelist’s Without Dogma (Letters, II, 670–1).

27 Sonya was planning to publish a supplementary thirteenth volume to the recent eighth edition of Tolstoy’s works, and this duly appeared in 1891.

28 To visit the school which Tolstoy’s daughters had opened without official permission.

29 Letters, II, 454. Professor Wagner had accused Tolstoy of modelling the spiritualist professor in his comedy on himself and another distinguished Petersburg professor.

30 The novel by Leskov.

31 One of two stories (Love and Monte Cristo) which his son had written (Letters, II, 479).

32 These ideas were to some extent expressed in Tolstoy’s unfinished story Mother.

33 Verse numbers differ slightly in English and Slavonic Bibles.

34 A reference to certain reforms by the German Emperor in the field of labour legislation.

35 The article eventually entitled Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?

36 Of The Fruits of Enlightenment.

37 Apparently a Czech woman who had written him an unsigned letter from a monastery.

38 Not an Englishman, but an American religious writer, Alonzo G. Hollister.

39 See the foreword Tolstoy wrote (The First Step) to Howard Williams’ The Ethics of Diet.

40 Tolstoy had originally agreed to send some of his diaries to Chertkov for him to make extracts from them. Chertkov had suggested that all the diaries should be handed over to him for safe keeping, and Chistyakov had come to collect them. However, Tolstoy changed his mind for fear of offending his wife (see Letters, II, 458).

41 Tolstoy was re-reading Literature and Dogma. In Chapter 7 Arnold writes about the method and the secret of Jesus Christ.

42 This sentence was erased, but can still be deciphered.

43 Thackeray’s novel.

44 Tolstoy, while not actually opposing Biryukov’s and Masha’s wish to get married as his wife did, nevertheless repeated his belief that marriage was ‘a fall’ for people wishing to lead a good Christian life. Biryukov had written to Masha, Tolstoy and Sofya Andreyevna (see also 6 July 1890) but none of the letters has survived.

45 The first Nikolay Nikolayevich is Gay, the second Strakhov.

46 Thought to be in a metaphorical sense!

47 See 1884, Note 97.

48 A letter from Gilbert Lewis Wilson, an American Unitarian pastor and friend of Adin Ballou’s, who was totally opposed to any form of violence.

49 Thomas Stevens, correspondent of the New York World. He planned to ride on to the Crimea.

50 V. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, a retired general, for many years head of a Tula arms factory; A. L. Sisserman, a military historian, some of whose writings on the Caucasus Tolstoy made use of when writing Hadji Murat.

51 See The First Step.

52 A Swiss citizen and member of the Salvation Army whom Sonya had engaged as a tutor to the young children.

53 N. D. Helbig (née Princess Shakhovskaya), a pianist and pupil of Liszt’s. She had come to Yasnaya Polyana in 1887 to meet Tolstoy and had returned as a guest on several occasions. She published her reminiscences of him in Tolstoy at Sixty, The Bookman, NY, 1911.

54 Of Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves? from Goltsev, the editor of Russian Thought.

55 R. V. Löwenfeld, a German Slavist and literary critic, translated Tolstoy and wrote a number of articles about him. He came to Yasnaya Polyana to collect material for a major book on Tolstoy’s life and works – Graf Leo N. Tolstoi. Sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Weltanschauung, Berlin, 1892 – which appeared in Russian translation in 1904.

56 A. A. Pastukhov, a former student at the Academy of Arts, who gave up his studies to come and work in the country near Yasnaya Polyana.

57 His own translation of William Lloyd Garrison senior’s Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the Peace Convention, Boston, 1838, and Strakhov’s translation of The Catechism of Non-resistance by Adin Ballou, an American pastor, opponent of slavery and advocate of non-resistance to evil. The foreword which Tolstoy wrote was later incorporated into The Kingdom of God is Within You.

58 A manuscript (not published) entitled Unknown Works of Count L. N. Tolstoy.

59 The Sin of Joost Avelingh: A Dutch story. It was written not by a Dane, but by a Dutchman, Maarten Maartens. Tolstoy read it in English.

60 M. V. Bulygin, a former guards officer and later a student at an agricultural academy, from which he was expelled for taking part in student disturbances. He owned a small farm in the Tula province and became a close friend of Tolstoy’s.

61 15 August should be 14 August, and the previous entry 13, not 14 August.

62 The scandal refers to the ban imposed by the American authorities on The Kreutzer Sonata; the abuse to an article on the same book by Archbishop Nikanor.

63 Löwenfeld sent Tolstoy several plays by Ibsen in German translation, of which he read The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm.

64 Björnson’s play En Hanske (A Gauntlet) which Tolstoy read in German. It was translated into Russian on Tolstoy’s recommendation.

65 From a Dr F. D. Brooks of Milwaukee.

66 Sonya was now in Moscow.

67 More exactly, he re-read it.

68 Coleridge’s philosophical treatise Aids to Reflection, a series of aphorisms and comments, which Strakhov had sent to Tolstoy.

69 This sentence from Luke’s Gospel was used as an epigraph to Chapter 9 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

70 E. de Pressenśe’s Histoire des trois premiers siècles de l’Église Chrétienne, 5 volumes, Paris, 1858–69. Tolstoy’s copy at Yasnaya Polyana has many notes in his handwriting.

71 By E. A. Dmitriyey-Mamonov in Russian Archives, 1873.

72 A. de Broglie, L’Église et l’Empire romain au IV-e siècle, 6 volumes, Paris, 1856–69. Lev Tolstoy brought his father the first volume on the reign of Constantine.

73 A. M. Ivantsov-Platonov’s book Heresies and Schisms of the First Three Centuries of Christianity. Part one. A Survey of the Sources for a History of the Ancient Sects, Moscow, 1877.

74 His novel In God’s Way, 1890. (På Guds Veje, 1889).

75 He wrote about it in The Kingdom of God is Within You.

76 In 1890 Tolstoy received from New York a brochure entitled Diana. A psychophysiological essay on sexual relations for married men and women. With the aid of Dr Bogomolets he quickly produced a Russian version of it entitled On the Relations between the Sexes. Tolstoy availed himself of the medical knowledge of Dr Bogomolets, whom he had previously helped to obtain permission to visit his sick wife, a political prisoner in Siberia.

77 Gay was sculpting a bust of Tolstoy, now in the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow.

78 Chertkov’s article An Evil Sport, for which Tolstoy wrote a short foreword.

79 Maupassant’s Le port, translated at Tolstoy’s suggestion by Novikov and considerably revised by Tolstoy. It was eventually published under the title Françoise.

80 Le port (Françoise) and part of Sur l’eau (entitled Expensive in Tolstoy’s version).

81 He re-read the drama which he had first read in 1859.

82 Die Trinksitten …, a brochure by the Swiss scientist Dr A. Forel directed against habitual drinking, which was translated at Tolstoy’s suggestion and published by The Intermediary.

83 In The Week, 1890, No. 43.

84 The Kingdom of God is Within You, referred to below as his article on non-resistance.

85 P. A. Gaydeburov, editor of The Week, sent cuttings of articles ridiculing On the Relations between the Sexes.

86 The Week, in reporting the publication of E. J. Dillon’s translation in the English journal the Fortnightly Review of Tolstoy’s story Walk in the Light while there is Light, had distorted the content of the story.

87 What I Believe. The reference in the following sentence is to the followers of Montanus, a second-century prophet from Phrygia, who gave his name to the ‘heresy’ of Montanism.

88 A reference to Chapter 2 of The Kingdom of God is Within You which contains a review of critical responses to What I Believe.

89 Chapter 3 of The Kingdom of God is Within You with its criticism of official church Christianity.

90 His impressions of the murder trial he attended at Krapivna were later used in the court scene in Resurrection and also in the murder episode in The Forged Coupon.

91 G. A. Rusanov, a landowner and university graduate, who greatly admired Tolstoy’s fiction and whose friendship with him dated from a visit to Yasnaya Polyana in 1883 to discuss the problems raised by A Confession – he declared in his will that it was due to Tolstoy that he became a Christian (Letters, II, 442); P. A. Boulanger, a personal friend of Tolstoy’s who had been arrested in 1897 for his activities on behalf of the Dukhobors, emigrated to England where he lived at the Purleigh Colony, but was later allowed to return to Russia where he wrote extensively about Tolstoy and his ideas. (Letters, II, 562).

92 See Note 6. Anatoly was Andrey’s brother.

93 Emile Joseph (Mikhaylovich in Russian) Dillon, an English journalist and translator of Tolstoy and author of Count Leo Tolstoy; a new Portrait by his Contemporary and Critic Dr E. J. Dillon. After the 1917 revolutions he published The Eclipse of Russia, London, 1918.

94 Bolkhin and some other Yasnaya Polyana peasants had been charged, at Tolstoy’s wife’s instigation, with felling birch trees on the estate.

95 The title Resurrection was used for the first time in this version.

96 Ilya Tolstoy’s wife.

97 Le sens et la portée du pari de Pascal in the Revue des Deux Mondes apropos of Pascal’s question about belief in God.

98 The Kingdom of God is Within You.

99 Leskov’s story Offended Before Christmas, which Tolstoy considered the best thing Leskov had written, was essentially a Tolstoyan fable illustrating the words ‘judge not’.

100 The rough drafts of his article On Art.

101 In fact he would not be sixty-three until August 1891.

1891

Today, 15 January, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: to think you can change your life by changing its outward conditions is just like thinking, as I did as a boy, that by sitting on a stick and taking hold of it at both ends I could lift myself up. […]

Today, 25 January, Yasnaya Polyana    Haven’t written my diary for nine days. All this time I’ve been writing my article bit by bit.1 I’ve made progress. Six chapters, I could say, are finished. Twice started work on science and art, and crossed it all out, wrote it again and crossed it out again, and can’t say I’ve made progress. Two days, yesterday and today, I wrote nothing. During this time I’ve been reading the journals, and above all Renan.2 The self-satisfaction of the infallible scholar is astonishing. Incidentally: ‘La mort d’un Français c’est un fait moral, celle d’un Cosaque n’est qu’un fait physiologique [the death of a Frenchman is a moral fact, that of a Cossack is only a physiological fact].’ […]

No visitors of note. Seryozha and Ilyusha. Things are just as difficult with Seryozha. He is becoming more and more remote with his employment, which he regards as work. Ilya, whom I drove back, said to me: ‘Why do you persecute Seryozha so?’ And these words of his sound to me as a constant reproach, and I feel myself to blame. I still pray, but more and more coldly. All the time lately I’ve been in a moral stupor. […]

Today, when walking and thinking about thieves, I clearly imagined how a thief, lying in wait for the person he wants to rob and discovering that he wasn’t travelling that day or was travelling by a different route, would be angry with him, would consider himelf to have been offended by him and, feeling conscious of being in the right himself, would prepare to take his revenge on him for it. And as I vividly imagined this to myself, I began to think how I could write it down, and then began to think how good it would be to write a novel de longue haleine, illuminating it with my present view on things. And I thought that I could unite in it all those plans of mine, which I regret not having carried out, all except for Alexander I and the soldier:3 the robber,4 and Koni’s story and Father Sergey and even the settlers,5 The Kreutzer Sonata and education.6 And also Mitasha7 and Notes of a Madman and the nihilists.8 And I felt so happy and cheerful. But I came back home, got down to science and art, crossed things out and stumbled to a halt. And I did nothing all day. It’s now getting on for 8, and I’m going upstairs. It’s forgivable because my stomach was very upset yesterday.

26 January, Yasnaya Polyana    I.I.A.9 How happy I would be if I’d written in my diary yesterday that I’d begun a big work of fiction. Yes, to start now and write a novel would make so much sense. My first, early novels were unconscious creations. Since Anna Karenina, for more than ten years I think, I’ve been dissecting, separating, analysing; now I know what’s what and I can mix it all together again and work in this mixture. Help me, Father.

11 February    Five days have gone by again. Today is the 11th. Yesterday I wrote about science and art. Made little progress; but it’s all clear. I’ve no energy. These last few days abusive articles have kept appearing in the papers. On the Afterword–by Suvorin.10 On The Fruits of Enlightenment in Berlin, saying that I’m an enemy of science.11 The same in Beketov.12 And yesterday the coup de grâce – the more so because I was out of sorts (and how glad of it!) – articles in Open Court about Booth and myself13 as examples of pharisaism – saying one thing and doing another – saying one should give everything to the poor and increasing one’s property by the sale of this very sermon. And referring to my wife. Like Adam – the woman gave it me, and I did eat. It hurt me very much, and it still hurts me as I write. But it shouldn’t hurt me, and I can put myself in such a position that it doesn’t hurt; but it’s very difficult.

I am a pharisee: but not in what they reproach me with. In that I’m innocent. And this is a lesson for me. But in the fact that while thinking and asserting that I live in God’s sight, for the sake of the good, because it is good, I really live by worldly fame, and have so choked up my soul with worldly fame that I can’t get through to God. I read newspapers and journals, looking for my name, I listen to a conversation and wait for it to be about me. I’ve so choked up my soul that I can’t dig through to reach God, and a life of good for the sake of good. But I must. I say every day: I don’t want to live for my own personal desires now, for worldly fame here, I want to live for love always and everywhere; but I live for my desires now and for fame here.

I will cleanse my soul. Once I have cleansed it and dug down to firm ground, I shall feel the possibility of living for the good, without the thought of worldy fame. Help me, Father. Father, help me. I know there is no Father as a person. But this form is natural to the expression of passionate longing. […]

Another week. Today is 14 February, Yasnaya Polyana. On the same day, I think, as I wrote my last diary entry, I began once more to read the diary which Sonya is copying out.14 And it hurt me. And I began to talk to her irritably and infected her with my anger. And she grew angry and said some cruel things. It lasted no more than an hour. I stopped settling accounts and began to think about her and made it up lovingly. ‘We’ve sinned a lot.’ Tanya and Masha are ill. Tanya is hysterical – sweet and pitiable. […]

I’ve just been thinking about the critics:

The business of criticism is to interpret the works of great writers, above all to single out from the great quantity of rubbish written by all of us – to single out what is best. And instead of this, what do they do? Force out of themselves, or more usually fish out from the works of a bad but popular writer some little platitude, and start to string their thoughts on to this platitude, mangling and distorting the writers in the process. And the result is that in their hands great writers become small, profound ones shallow and wise ones stupid. This is called criticism. And this partly meets the requirements of the masses – the limited masses – who are glad that a great writer is pinned down by something at least, if only something stupid, and is notable and memorable for them; but this isn’t criticism, i.e. making a writer clear; it’s making him obscure. […]

Reading Our Destiny by Gronlund.15 Much in it that is good; for example, he says that if people had absolute free will it would be the greatest calamity. Man may not steal, just as he may not fly. It’s good, too, that equality, as he says, must be economic equality as far as consumption is concerned, but not equality as far as production. But under the present system on the contrary, equality has been established as far as production is concerned – a brilliant musician or poet can weave in a mill; but economically, two completely equal nonentities are divided by a chasm – the one on the peak of luxury, the other in the depths of poverty.

Good too is the assertion, as I think I wrote somewhere myself long ago, that it’s foolish to talk about equality of obligations when one side pays 0.00001 of its wealth (say a day’s pay), while the other side pays an entire fourteen-hour day’s labour, i.e. the whole life of a day. I wrote and said16 that a government which requires equal fulfilment of obligation from both sides and punishes non-fulfilment equally, is in direct violation of true justice, while observing its outward appearance.

Gronlund polemicises with Spencer and with all those who reject government or see its purpose only in the protection of the individual. Gronlund supposes the basis of morality to be in communal association. As an example, or rather an embryo, of a real socialist government he puts forward the trade unions17 which, by constraining the individual and forcing him to sacrifice his own interests, subordinate him to the service of common aims. I think that’s wrong. He says that government organises labour. That would be good; but he forgets that government always coerces and exploits labour under the guise of organising it. It would be splendid if government organised labour; but to do that it would have to be disinterested, have to be saintly. But where are they, these saints? It’s true that individualism as they call it, meaning by that the ideal of the personal good of each individual, is a most pernicious principle; but the principle of the good of many people collectively is just as pernicious; only its pernicious nature is not immediately apparent. The achievement of this cooperation, communism, communal association, instead of individualism, will not come about by organisation – we can never guess at future organisation – but only by each person following the unobscured prompting of his heart, conscience, reason, faith, call it what you will – the law of life. Bees and ants live communally, not because they know the arrangement which is most advantageous to them and follow it – they have no conception of the expediency, harmony and good sense of the beehive or the ant-heap, as they appear to us; but because they surrender to their innate instinct (as we say), submit to their own law of life, not as a result of devious philosophising, but of direct wisdom. I imagine that if bees – for all their instinct (as we call it), for all their awareness of their own law – were to go further and try to devise the best arrangement possible for their communal life, they would devise a life which would be their ruin. This awareness of the law alone contains something that is both smaller and bigger than reasoning. And it alone has been given us in order to lead us on to the one narrow path of truth, along which man and all mankind must travel. This is very important, and this is what I would like to say in my article.18 It’s now gone 11.

16 February    Still the same tiredness and indifference. Began to stitch boots. A talk with Pavel19 reminded me of real life: his boy and the boy’s master stand and make six pairs of boots a week, for which he works six days, eighteen hours a day, from 6 to 12. And that’s true. And we wear these boots.

Today, 16 February, Yasnaya Polyana. Called on Vasily20 – his broken teeth, dirty shirts, the unclean air and the cold – and above all the stench – astonished me, although I’ve known about it for a long time. Yes, to the words of a liberal who will say that science, freedom, and culture will remedy all this one can only reply: ‘Put things right, but until they are put right it’s harder for me to live with those who live in plenty, than with those who suffer privations. Put things right, but hurry up, and I’ll wait downstairs.’ Oh! Lies, lies, how corrosive they are! But what is needed to put things right? They think – to have a lot of everything, bread, tobacco and schools. But, you know, that isn’t enough. Seryoga, who can read and write, stole money to go to Moscow. He’s a b    , his father beats him, Konstantin is lazy. In order to put things right it’s not enough to alter everything in a material sense, to increase everything; you need to change people’s souls, to make them good and moral. But you can’t do that quickly, by increasing material goods. The only possible arrangement is to make all men good. But in order at least to help towards this, if not to achieve it, isn’t it probably best to get away from idle people who live on the sweat and blood of their brethren and go and join these exhausted brethren? Not probably, but certainly.
    Thought yesterday: […]

(2) Read Review of Reviews (revolting), but there was an article there against strikes;21  it was argued that in Australia the capitalists won by joining forces. And indeed how obvious it is that joining forces is a remedy against strikes, and that the capitalists – i.e. those who are protected by authority and power – will always be stronger. […]

17 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Was intending to go to Pirogovo yesterday, but changed my mind. Read Montaigne and Ertel.22 The first is old, the second bad. Very much out of spirits, but had a good talk with the children and with Sonya, despite the fact that she is very disturbed. Gay came today with his wife and a picture.23 The picture is good. What an extraordinary thing this irritability is – this need to contradict one’s wife. […] An article by Mikhaylovsky in the Russian Gazette about alcohol and tobacco.24 It’s astonishing what they need to write. But it’s still more astonishing what moves and interests me about it. Help me, Father, to serve only Thee and to value only Thy judgements.

26 February, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I read the passage in Diderot about people only being happy when there aren’t any tsars or bosses or laws – mine or yours.25 […]

1 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] This morning, after a bad night, I wrote a lot and clearly, about non-resistance to evil. I’m making progress. In the evening I slept and read Ibsen and Heine.26 […]

5 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Was very depressed today. Sonya talked about the printing,27 not understanding how this depresses me. Yes, I feel it particularly painfully, because I’m depressed at heart. Depressed by the evil life of the gentry of which I’m a part. Wrote nothing. And didn’t try to. I’m reading Gronlund. Not bad, but old and trivial.

Thought: I read Kozlov’s article against me,28 and I wasn’t at all hurt. And I think it’s because in recent times I’ve had a lot of lessons, a lot of pricks in this place: it’s become numb and hardened, or rather I’ve grown a bit better, become less vain. And I think how beneficial, not only physical, but moral pain is. It alone teaches. Any pain – repentance for an evil deed – how necessary it is; if not for me myself, then for other people whom I tell about it. That’s how it is with me. All moral sufferings I can and will tell people about. Thought about myself, that in order to escape from my difficult situation of being party to an evil life, the best and most natural thing is to write what I am writing and want to write, and to publish it. I want to suffer. Help me, Father. It’s now 11. I’m going upstairs and to bed.

Today, 9 March, Yasnaya Polyana    All three days I’ve been writing, and although it’s not much, it’s sensible, and I’m making progress. I think I’m at the end of the fourth chapter. Lyova has been; he left yesterday. On the eve of his departure we talked about heredity. He insisted that it’s true. For me the admission that people are not equal in their valeur intrinsèque is the same as for a mathematician to admit that figure ones are not equal. The whole science of life would be destroyed. Felt sad, depressed and ashamed the whole time. […]

(3) Read a wonderful definition by Henry James (senior) of what true progress is.29  Progress is a process like the modelling and carving of a statue from a block of marble, the elimination of all that is superfluous. The marble, the material, is nothing. The important thing is the carving, the trimming off of the superfluous. […]

(6) Thought today that all our works of art are nevertheless pagan (I’ll speak about poetry) – all the heroes and heroines are beautiful, physically attractive. Beauty before everything. This could serve as the basis for a whole big work of art.

This morning I told Sonya with difficulty and with trepidation that I would announce that everyone would have the right to print my writings. I saw she was distressed. Then when I came back she began to say, all flushed and angry as she was, that she would print anything at all just to spite me. I tried to calm her down, but not well; I was excited myself and went out. After dinner she came up to me, started to kiss me, saying she would do nothing to oppose me, and began to cry. I was very, very glad. Help me, Father. I’ve forgotten something important. It’s now gone 8 in the evening, I’m going upstairs.

13 March    Today is the 13th, night-time. Sonya has just left for Moscow with Davydov.30 This morning the American Creelman31 left, he made me very tired. A superficial, intellectually clever man, a Republican, an American aristocrat. He came the day before yesterday. And swallowed up both days. During these days Nikiforov also came, and I got on very well with him. Also Vyacheslav,32 who came on the 10th. On that day I worked a bit and went to Davydov’s in Tula to find out about the business of the peasants.33 It can be sorted out. Things are going very well with Sonya. Today, I see, she has put out photos of all the children except Vanechka, and is proudly admiring them. It’s touching. […]

Received Diderot34 Much in it that is good. Something printed in Review of Reviews: ‘Come to your senses, oh men!’35 I don’t know what it is. […]

Today, 17 March, Yasnaya Polyana    The thing printed in Review of Reviews was ‘N. Palkin [Nicholas Stick]’. All these days I’ve still been in the same low spirits. I’ve written nothing. Only looked through things. Sonya has been to Moscow and is now back. Received a letter and the Arena with Ballou’s correspondence.36 Very good. […]

18 March    Got up very early. Fell asleep. Can’t say I did any writing, only re-reading and revising. Astonishing weakness of thought – apathy. Temptation, as the monks say. I must resign myself to the thought that my career as a writer is finished – and be glad without it. The only thing is that without it my life of luxury is so hateful to me that I never cease tormenting myself. Read Autobiography of a Shaker.37 Much in it that is excellent. Then in Arena, Abbot’s What is Christianity?38  – excellent. Partly what I wanted to say myself. Was just thinking of starting writing, but again – disinclination and apathy. Yet how many good artistic tasks there are to do.

Yesterday I received Chertkov’s article from him – very good.39 I must write to him. I pray, but there’s no intellectual, artistic or spiritual movement. […]

Today, 24 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought during this time: […]

(6) Yesterday, on my way to Tula, I thought – and I don’t know whether what I thought was sinful – that I have a difficult life to endure. I live in the conditions and environment of a sensual life – desire, vanity – and yet I don’t live in this life, I’m weighed down by it all: I don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t live in luxury, don’t boast – or at least I hate all this – and this unnecessary, alien environment deprives me of what constitutes the meaning and beauty of life: association with the poor, spiritual exchange with them. I simply don’t know whether I’m doing right resigning myself to it and ruining the children. I can’t; I’m afraid of evil. Help me, Father.

(7) How easily we say we will forgive insults. The day before yesterday Vanechka hit Kuzka. I said he was a bad boy. He was hurt and was in a bad temper and began to avoid me and say he wouldn’t go for a walk with me and wouldn’t let me into his room. And what happens? I was offended, and unkind feelings towards him rose up in me, a wish to break his will. I pretended to ignore him and deliberately walked into his room which he didn’t want to let me into.

No, it’s difficult for us, corrupt and proud men, to forgive an insult, to forget it, to love our enemies, even those like dear three-year-old son Vanechka.

(8) […] Schopenhauer puts it very well:40 the new is seldom good, because the good doesn’t remain new for long. […] (1) Travels, reading, friendships, new impressions are necessary as long as these impressions are assimilated by life, as long as they leave their mark on a more or less clean surface; but as soon as there are so many of them that some are not digested before others are taken in, they are harmful: the result is a hopless state of mental diarrhoea – all sorts of impressions slip right through without leaving any trace. I’ve seen English tourists like that – and indeed all sorts of people. There are various dukes, kings and rich men who are like that. […]

25 March, Yasnaya Polyana    Slept badly. I must stop it. Got up very early. Went for a walk and imagined very vividly, as I seldom do, a work of fiction on the subject of upbringing. Lopukhina. The mother. The problem of the mother. Notes of a Mother.41 Much that is good artistically speaking came into my head, and is still coming. Then I got on with the 6th chapter and finished it somehow; removed my definition of the meaning of life to the 7th. […]

26 March, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Got a clear idea of the conclusion of the article, namely that only those who recognise the law of sexual chastity can reject war, i.e. recognise the law not to commit murder.

The boys have arrived.42 It’s gone 12 now, I’m going to have lunch. Sonya has arrived with Ilya. And all the time they have been quarrelling about money. I was very sad. Talk about horses, money, the sale of my works, volume 13 and other unpleasant things. I was depressed and sorry for myself: it’s bad. At least I didn’t blame others and could see my own guilt.

Today, 9 April, Yasnaya Polyana    Nothing special. Sonya is still in Petersburg,43  her visit sometimes distresses me, but last night I woke up, began thinking and feeling annoyed, but said to myself: it’s good, it’s good for me, it’s a trial. And I immediately felt easier: the person disappeared and the thing remained – the trial. And I felt competely at ease, so much so that I fell asleep.

Yesterday Mitasha was here with Isakov44 – a type of self-satisfied, high society hog, debauched, feeble and good-natured. I behaved badly towards him, didn’t sufficiently remember his usefulness. […] Two irritating and debilitating things in succession: articles by Rod45 and Strakhov.46 More abuse from the Germans.47 It’s good for me, always good. Read Diderot48 and finished it. Started Guyau.49 Poor – the obscurity of youth. Made no notes except for the article.

Yesterday began writing Notes of a Mother. Wrote a lot, but it only served to convince me that I mustn’t write that way.50 It’s too impoverished: I must write in the first person. […]

18 April, I think, Yasnaya Polyana    Sonya came back about three days ago. I found it unpleasant, her ingratiating herself with the Tsar and telling him that manuscripts were being stolen from me.51 Icouldn’t restrain myself at first and spoke to her in an unfriendly manner, but then things turned out all right, especially because wicked feelings of mine made me glad of her return. She is impulsive, but well disposed towards me, and I wish I could always remember that that thing, and not she herself, is the obstacle, and that one shouldn’t be angry or wish it to be otherwise. Got on with Notes of a Mother a second time, the next day, but since then I’ve left it. I’m busy again with my article, but I’m still revising everything unfortunately, revising the 3rd and 4th chapters again. Ilya has arrived with Tsurikov and Naryshkin, and also Seryozha and Lyova, and they’ve been dividing things up.52 I have to abandon my previous intention – to renounce my property rights – and have to grant deeds of gift. Masha refuses hers, naturally, and is displeased that her refusal isn’t taken seriously. I said to her: ‘They have to decide: is it good or bad to own property, to possess land given by me? Is it good or bad to refuse it? They know it’s good. And if it’s good, they themselves should act accordingly.’ But they don’t reason like that. They don’t answer the question whether it’s good or bad to refuse, but say: ‘She refuses in word only, because she’s young and doesn’t understand.’ How can I be oppressed by life when Masha is with me! Lyova and Tanya are nice too, but they lack that moral, religious lever which controls us. Alexey Mitrofanovich has been demonstrating the differential calculus to me. I understood it, very well. No letters in particular. Everyone asks me to send them my works that are banned. […]

Haven’t written my diary for ten days. Today is 2 May, Yasnaya Polyana. […] Lyova wants to leave the university; I’m sorry for him. […] Sonya is ill. I’m praying. Reading Ethics of Diet,53 excellent, and have read Plato’s Les lois.54 … Noted down: (1) The self-satisfied type, the man who considers himself moral, is an immoral man, because he observes family rituals and decorum. […] (4) Talked yesterday about education. Why do parents send their children away to school? It suddenly became clear to me. If parents kept them at home, they would see the consequences of their immoral lives in their children. They would see themselves in their children, as though in a mirror. The father drinks wine at dinner with his friends, the son in the tavern. The father goes to a ball, the son to a party. The father does nothing, neither does the son. But send him to school, and the mirror in which parents see themselves is covered up.

(5) I walk along a hard road, and nearby gaily dressed women are coming back from work singing lively songs. A pause between songs, and I can hear the measured tread of my feet on the road, then a song again, then silence again and the tread of my footsteps. It’s good. When I was young, something always used to sing inside me, or often did, without any women’s songs. And everything – the sound of footsteps, and the sunlight and the swaying of the hanging birch branches – everything seemed to be accompanied by music. […]

Today, 10 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought:

(1) When a person dies, his consciousness is separated from him, and, like a seed that has ripened and fallen to the ground, it looks for something to catch hold of, somewhere to strike root in the soil it needs in order to begin to live again. If a seed, in the process of shrivelling up and falling, could feel, it would feel the cessation of life. Isn’t this the same as a person feels when he is dying? […] 

(3) The main concern of people and the main occupation of people is not eating – eating doesn’t require much effort – but gluttony. People talk about their interests and exalted aims, women about lofty feelings, and they don’t talk about food; but their main activity is directed towards food. We wealthy people arrange it so as to give the appearance that we don’t bother about these things, but they happen of their own accord. All people eat on the average, I think, three times as much as they need as far as quantity, and ten times as much as far as the cost and the labour required to produce it. This is one of the main changes that people will have to face. […]

Today, 22 May, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought:

(1) An afterword to the afterword: Whether I explained properly or not why the greatest sexual continence is necessary, I don’t know. But I do know for certain that copulation is an abomination which can only be regarded or thought about without revulsion under the influence of sexual desire. Even in order to have children you wouldn’t do this to a woman you love. I’m writing this at a time when I’m possessed myself by sexual desire, against which I can’t fight. […]

(8) A very confused young man was living with a friend: no money, no job, ashamed to trouble his friend. ‘I’m unhappy!’ Why go on living? He sold his coat, went to the public baths, took a room with a bath and opened his veins with a razor. People came, and found him unconscious. They bandaged his wounds and began treating him. He lived, but was blind, and lost the use of his arms and legs. Now he trembles for his life, and all his strength is spent on maintaining his health. If a man didn’t try to kill himself at one go, but in stages, in ten stages, and in such a way that at each stage, i.e. having reduced his life by a certain proportion, he were able to ask himself: ‘Do you still want to die?’ then I think the more he were to reduce his life, the more he would value what was left and to a very great degree, so that nobody would kill himself. (This isn’t clear.)

(9) For a work of fiction: I not only eat and drink, I practise art, play the piano, draw, write, read and study, and all of a sudden some poor people, people in rags, victims of fires, widows and orphans turn up, and I can’t go on in their presence – I’m ashamed. Why the devil did they come?; if only they had stayed where they were they wouldn’t have bothered me.

Such an occurrence in the midst of food, lawn tennis, and artistic and scientific pursuits is better evidence than any rational arguments.55

Forgot to note down that I got on with Father Sergey one day recently. Decided to finish everything I’ve started. Wrote badly, but it will do. Received from Davydov a very good case for Koni’s story.56 It’s now gone 10, I’ll go for a drink of coffee.

2 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Haven’t done much work all this time, though I’ve made some progress. I’m beginning to doubt the importance of what I write. There’s been a mass of visitors. […] I’ve made no notes all this time. This morning something clear and necessary – not to do with the article, but something personal – came to the surface of my mind, and I’ve forgotten it. Walked to Tula, went to the abattoir but didn’t see any slaughtering.57 But I saw a woman in Tula: eyes close together and straight eyebrows, seemingly on the point of tears, but plump, nice-looking, pitiable, and arousing sensuality. That’s what the merchant’s wife who seduces Father Sergey should be like. […]

I’m very depressed because of Sonya. All this worry about money and property, and the complete failure to understand. We were just talking about whether a person can sacrifice his life rather than do something which harms nobody, but is offensive to God. She objected, [indecipherable word] – words of abuse. I had evil thoughts of going away. I mustn’t. I must endure it. […]

6 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Lyova dreams about marriage and thinks it’s necessary, thinks that you can keep pure by external means like marriage. I said, ‘You can stop people from fighting by tying their hands together.’

7 June    Yesterday evening Lyova and Andryusha returned. All my sons are arriving – for the division of the property. It’s very depressing, and it’s going to be unpleasant. […]

Got up early, went to Tula by train with Petya Rayevsky. Went to the abattoir. They drag the animal by the horns, screw up its tail so that the cartilages crunch, don’t hit it properly first time, but when they do, it struggles and they cut its throat, let the blood flow into basins and then flay the skin from its head. The head, bare of skin and with the tongue clenched between the teeth, faces upwards, while the belly and legs writhe about. The butchers are angry because the animals take a long time to die. The cattle-dealers scurry about with anxious faces, making their calculations.

Visited the prison58 – a wonderful house with ornate carving for the warder, a wonderful office; wonderful tables and officials, the one in charge with his breath smelling of alcohol. […]

8 June, Yasnaya Polyana    If I’m alive. For the foreword on vegetarianism – εʋϰρατεια, and Lichtenberg’s remark about the development of moderation in children.59

My sons arrived, and there was talk in the evening about the division of the property. Breakfast with the Marshal of the Nobility.60 They didn’t behave well either. They didn’t quarrel, but they attribute importance to such trivialities. […]

9, 10 June, Yasnaya Polyana    High summer. Heart’s ease, a smell like rotting honey from the camomile, cornflowers, and silence in the woods, only the incessant hum of bees and insects in the treetops. Did some mowing today, Good. My writing is going badly. I’m thrashing about on the spot. But there are plenty of artistic impressions. A letter today from Chertkov with notes of ideas – some very good ones.

(1) There are two ways of not feeling material need: one is to moderate one’s demands, the other – to increase one’s income. The first, in itself, is always moral; the second, in itself, is always immoral: you don’t acquire stone palaces by honest toil.

(2) For Koni’s story. He plays catch with Katyusha and they kiss behind a bush. And for the same story: the first part – the poetry of material love; the second – the poetry, the beauty of true love. […]

(5) For Father Sergey. He discovered what it means to trust in God only when he was utterly and irrevocably ruined in people’s eyes. Only then did he discover that strength which is full of life. The result was complete indifference to people and their actions. They can take him prisoner, put him on trial, cross-examine him, reprieve him – it’s all the same to him. Two states: the first – worldly fame – disquiet; the second – devotion to the will of God – complete tranquillity. […]

Today, 18 June,61 Yasnaya Polyana    […] Called in at an inn in Kryltsovo. The inn-keeper, his brother-in-law, his wife and a sacristan were drinking liqueur and tea with jam. They’re just beginning to do what we’re giving up doing. A peasant woman from Telyatinki was walking about barefoot trying to get some bread. None for two days; her children were begging.

It’s miserable at home – the division. Vera had a row with her mother, Tanya quarrelled with Masha, Marya Fyodorovna62 gets in the way. It’s miserable.

15 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Got on well with the last chapter, and decided to go a walk with Alyokhin and Khokhlov. We set off, and walked happily as far as Bulygin’s. Bulygin was reading Dostoyevsky’s Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Well conceived, badly executed.

13 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought (1) Children sometimes give bread, sugar and money to the poor and are pleased with themselves, and moved by the thought that they are doing something good. Children don’t know and can’t know where the bread and money come from. But grown-ups ought to know this and to understand that there can’t be anything good in taking something from one person and giving it to another. But many grown-ups don’t understand this, especially women.

(2) For Father Sergey. After he has killed, he sits in the darkness and suddenly sees that the dawn is breaking, it’s getting lighter, the day is near – and the light. Terror. (3) The intellectual fashion of exalting women, of asserting that they are not only equal to men in their spiritual capacities, but higher than them, is a very bad and harmful fashion.

The fact that women’s rights should not be restricted in any way, that people should behave towards a woman with just the same respect and love as towards a man, that she is the equal of a man as far as rights go – of that there can be no doubt; but to assert that the average woman is endowed with the same spiritual strength as a man, to expect to find in every woman what you expect to find in every man is to deliberately deceive yourself, and to deceive yourself to the detriment of woman. If we expect of a woman what we expect of a man, we shall require it, and when we don’t find what we require, we shall be irritated, and ascribe to ill will what is the result of impossibility.

So to regard women as what they are – weaker creatures spiritually – is not cruelty to women; to regard them as equals is cruelty. By weakness or less spiritual strength I mean less obedience of the flesh to the spirit, and especially – the main characteristic of women – less trust in the dictates of reason.

(4) Among the items of news with which I was greeted at home was the fact that the gardener’s wife had given birth again, and that an old woman had come again and taken the baby away, goodness knows where to. Everyone was terribly upset.
The use of contraceptive means is all right for them, but for this thing they can’t find strong enough words of censure. Today it was learned that the grandmother had returned and brought the baby back. On the way the grandmother had met other women carrying similar children. One of the children had had a feeding bottle put too far into its mouth. It sucked it in and choked. One day they brought twenty-five children to Moscow. Of these twenty-five, nine were not accepted because they were legitimate or ill. Tanya Andreyevna63 went in the morning to appeal to the gardener’s wife’s conscience. Sticking up for her husband warmly, the gardener’s wife said that given their poverty and the uncertainty of their life, she oughtn’t to have children. And her breasts wouldn’t feed them. In a word it was inconvenient for her. Just before this I was swinging three abandoned children on a swing, and then I met another boy, Vasya’s nephew. Generally speaking, the place is swarming with children. They are born and grow up to become drunkards, syphilitics, savages. At the same time people talk about saving the lives of men and women and children, and also about destroying them. – Why produce savages? What’s good about that? – What one needs is not to kill them, not to stop producing them, but to use all one’s strength to make people out of savages. That’s the only good thing. And that’s a thing that can’t be done by words alone, but by living example. […]

25 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday Ilya came. There’s still the same conflict with his mother. I’m not angry at their obtuseness. Living in such proximity, how can they help being infected by one another at least a little bit? […]

Got up at 8. Pouring with rain. Drank coffee on my own. Still weak – though I’m a bit better today. Thought again in the night about the foreword to the vegetarian book, i.e. about abstinence, and wrote not too badly all morning. Then went for a walk and a bathe. It’s now 5 o’clock. Still weak. I sleep badly. And I’m unbelievably vile to myself. This is the devil that God has sent me, as Paul said. These last few days I’ve been reading Björnson. Incoherent, but many good things in it. It’s good the way he chased after and ran past the girl he had hypnotised, and she saw his terribly brutal face.64 Montaigne. Thought: […]

(3) Everyone is talking about the famine,65 everyone is worrying about the starving people, and wanting to help them and save them. Yet how disgusting it is! People who have never thought about others, about the ordinary people, suddenly for some reason are burning with the desire to serve them. It’s either vanity – wanting to show off – or fear; but there’s nothing good about it. […]

(4) You can’t begin to do good today because of some particular event, if you didn’t do so yesterday. People do good, but not because there’s a famine, but because it’s good to do it.

27 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up late. Had a good sleep. Had a good long talk with Vyazemsky.66 Tanya has left. From 1 till 3 I wrote well about gluttony.67 It’s becoming much clearer. After dinner I felt sad, disgusted with our life, and ashamed. All round us there are hungry, wretched people, but we … I’m ashamed. I feel painfully guilty. Father, help me to do Thy will. After dinner I read some ancient history. Thought:

(1) The mistake about the possibility of Christian virtue without abstinence comes from the idea of the possibility of love without self-sacrifice. It’s now gone 10 o’clock. I’m going on to the terrace. Help me to love.

14 July, Yasnaya Polyana    I.I.A. Still the 13th; a talk with my wife, still on the same subject of renouncing the copyright of my works;68 again the same failure to understand me: ‘I’m obliged to do it for the children’s sake.’ She doesn’t understand, and the children don’t understand as they spend money, that every rouble expended by them and obtained from books is shame and suffering to me. Never mind the shame, but why weaken the effect which the propagation of the truth might have? Evidently it must be so. And the truth will do its job without me.

(1) A picture of the end of June. After the afternoon break the swifts are circling, the lime trees are fragrant and the bees are thronging. […]

(5) For a future drama.69 An argument with the Orthodox: ‘I can’t believe’ and with the liberals: ‘I can’t help believing.’

(7) For Alexander I.70 A soldier was killed in his place, and then he came to his senses.

(8) A thief is not a man who takes what he needs, but a man who keeps, and doesn’t give to others, what he doesn’t need himself but others do.

Today, 22 July, Yasnaya Polyana    […]

(1) For Father Sergey. When he has sinned with the merchant’s daughter and is tormented by it, it occurs to him that if he is going to sin, it would be better to sin with the beautiful A., and not with this disgusting creature. And he is seized with disgust once more. […]

Today, 31 July, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s only a week since I last wrote, but it seems a very long time. […] Noted during this time:

(1) A subject – the impressions and history of a man who was once a down-and-out and became a park-keeper near the house of a gentleman, where he sees the life of the gentry at close quarters and even takes part in it.71

(2) Talked with Khokhlov: anarchy and socialism, i.e. repudiation of property, are Christianity, only with the retention of the existing regime. Christianity is partly socialism and anarchy, but without violence and with the readiness to sacrifice.

(3) Very important: freedom of the will is the consciousness of one’s own life. That man is free who is conscious that he is alive. To be conscious that one is alive means to be conscious of the law of one’s life; it means to strive to fulfil the law of one’s life.

It’s gone 9, I’m going upstairs. I fear for myself for this night. Father, help me.

Today, August 12, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought during this time: […]

(4) The absurdity of our lives is the result of the power of women; but the power of women is the result of the incontinence of men; so the cause of the ugliness of life is the incontinence of men. […]

28 August, Yasnaya Polyana    I.I.A.

Was alive, am alive, and today is 13 September. During this time I’ve written quite a lot. I’ve made such progress that I’m near the end. I’m writing chapter 8, which will be the conclusion. The visitors during this time were all very pleasant. First Vanya Gorbunov with Battersby,72 who made an extremely pleasant impression. An absolutely free, and religious man, a man who lives his religion. Then Novosyolov and Gastev73 came, and both left a very pleasant impression too. Also during this time, Sonya and the boys left for Moscow, and then Lyova. She left on the 3rd, I think. I wrote a letter to her yesterday, asking her to send my letter about renouncing my royalties to the editor. I don’t know what will happen. My health is just about holding up. I still want to work physically, and I’m still not starting. Yesterday we read a nice little thing translated from Italian: The Beauty.74 Thought during this time:

(1) Another person, and another and another. All new and special, and you keep thinking that this one really will be new and special, and know something the others don’t know, and live better than the others. And it’s always just the same, the same weaknesses, the same low level of thought.

(2) How is it that people who now live round the necks of others can’t understand that this is wrong, and can’t get off of their own free will, instead of waiting until they are thrown off and crushed? […]

(5) There is an enormous advantage in expressing one’s thoughts outside an integrated work. In a work, the thought often has to be compressed from one side and expanded from another, like grapes ripening in a solid bunch; but expressed individually, it has its own centre in itself, and develops evenly in all directions. […]

(9) Moltke assures us that now it’s the peoples who want to fight, not the governments. The cocks have been baited, and trained to it, and then they say: it’s what they want themselves. […]

18 September, Pirogovo    Sonya has come back. The Bobrinskys were here last night. Not much of interest. Sonya had a good journey back. I was tormented by her silence about the letter, but it turned out that she agrees. Sent off the letter of the 16th.75

Lvov came and spoke about the famine. Slept badly all night and didn’t get to sleep till 4 o’clock, still thinking about the famine. I think it’s necessary to set up soup kitchens. And with this purpose I set off for Pirogovo. On the same day I had an unpleasant talk with Sonya. Because she didn’t want me to go, she began to say something quite different. I was angry. And I was angry with Seryozha today. He was cross yesterday.

So far nothing has come of the soup kitchens. I’m afraid I made a mistake. One shouldn’t search, but only answer requests. Thought about money. One could say: the use of money is a sin when there is no indubitable need for it. But what determines whether the need is indubitable? First, that there is nothing arbitrary about its use, no choice – that the money can be used for one thing only. Secondly (I’ve forgotten). I mean to say that not using money in a given case will weigh on one’s conscience, but that’s too vague. It’s now gone 11. I’m in Pirogovo. And I feel well physically and mentally.

25 September, Klekotki.76    A whole week has passed. On the 19th I set off on horseback for Uspenskoye with Tanya and Vera. Bibikov is very kind-hearted, he gave us a bed for the night and took us next day into the heart of the province. We looked round the village of Ogaryovka. An intelligent headman – he had made a list of all the houses. The poverty is not so great because there are potatoes. I began to console myself. But then it got worse. I’ll insert the pages from my diary about my journey round the Bogoroditsk and Yefremov districts.77 […]
22. Came home; Sonya unwell and out of sorts, and so was I. Hardly slept all night. In the morning I said there was work to do here, feeding the starving. She understood that I didn’t want to go to Moscow. A scene began. I said some venomous things. Behaved very badly. The same evening I went to Tula to Zinovyev’s. Didn’t find out much from him. But we had a friendly talk. Returned home and found a willingness to make it up, and we made it up. On the 23rd I decided to go to Yepifan. Tanya accompanied me. Picked up Masha in Obolenskoye. Pisarev an excellent type of Zemstvo man – he finds meaning in serving the people. And his wife is sweet and gentle. On the 24th we walked to the village of Meshcherki. The run-down state of the people is dreadful: ruined houses – there was a fire last year – they don’t have anything, but they still drink. They are like children who laugh when they get into trouble. Towards evening Bogoyavlensky and Rayevsky came. I decided to settle in with Rayevsky. It would be good if Sonya doesn’t object. I even left ninety roubles to buy potatoes and beet.

8 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] I’d only just written Zolotaryov a recipe on how to establish loving relations with the people you live with when on going upstairs, I succumbed to the teasing of Sofya Andreyevna, who asserted that people who try to live a moral life cease to be candid. […]

Read. Today is 24 October, 1891, Yasnaya Polyana. Fifteen days have passed. And a lot has happened. Yesterday, the 23rd, I was unwell, a sort of influenza; Mitasha Obolensky and Bulygin came. In the morning I got on with the 4th chapter. In the evening I sent Grot a supplement to the article on the famine.78 On the 22nd Sonya left. I was already unwell. Before she left, she talked with me so joyfully and well that I couldn’t believe it was the same person. Wrote about the famine all day; Grot came and I felt very tired in the head. Grot left in the evening. On the 21st I corrected the proofs of my article. I like it. I must go into the question more deeply. In the evening I read and finished Lay Down Your Arms.79 Well put together. The passionate conviction is obvious, but it lacks talent. […]

(3) Sonya said that her daughter-in-law Sonya was a bad mother. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘she doesn’t do what you condemn in The Kreutzer Sonata. She doesn’t poison her husband’s life with children. But if you love children and look after them you cease to be attractive.’ And I thought: what a necessary flavouring for everything kindness is. The very best virtues are worth nothing without kindness; while with it the very worst vices are forgiven. What a good type for a work of fiction – a weak, corrupt, but kindly person. I think there have been such already, but I can sense such a type in a new way.

(4) A woman came to ask for protection; she had been sentenced to a fifty rouble fine or three months’ imprisonment for bootlegging, and she was a widow with no land and four children. What was the man doing locking her up, I thought. They punish this beggar and her children because she wanted a twenty-five rouble share in the treasury’s profits.

Popov is still here. We are quite ready to go. Still no money.80 I don’t know what we’ll do. But the motive is good, I think. To be sure the wretched desire for worldly fame is mixed up with it. But I’ll try to do it for the sake of God. Today I finished the 4th chapter, I think. And finally revised the 6th and half of the 7th.81 How I would like to finish it. It’s now 11 o’clock. I’m expecting letters from Kozlovka. Today, Begichevka. At Rayevsky’s. This is our fifth day here. We are well. There’s work to do. Wrote an article: ‘Is there enough bread?’82 There’s plenty to note down but it’s late now. [….]

Today, 6 November, am, Begichevka    Our three soup kitchens are now organized. I wrote to the paper about whether there’s enough bread, and began a story Who is Right?83 The girls are well occupied. I also revised the 7th and 8th chapters. I’m well. A letter from England with an offer to be an agent for relief contributions.84 Two letters from Sonya. I never cease to be sad for her and because of her. Yesterday, when praying to God for deliverance from the temptation of pride and for humility, I thought that if I want humility, I must want the things that humiliate, and began to pray with diffidence for humiliation to be sent me. […] Yesterday I revised the proofs of the famine article sent by Grot. A thought today for Sergey.

It’s necessary for him to struggle against pride, to get into that false circle where humility turns out to be pride, to feel the hopelessness of his pride, and only after his fall and shame to feel that he has escaped from that false circle and can be truly humble. And then comes the happiness of escaping from the arms of the devil and feeling himself in the embraces of God.

Today, 17 November, Begichevka    Twelve days have passed, full of events, full of active life, but seemingly empty in the sense of spiritual life. I’ve written nothing in my notebook except the names of peasants asking to use the soup kitchens, etc. I’ll try roughly to reconstruct the past days. However, there is one thing I noted down, namely:

(1) All sciences, and arts, all education is good as long as it isn’t necessary, in order to acquire its fruits, for a single person to be crushed, afflicted or deprived of life or wellbeing. But all our education is built on the labours of people who are crushed.

Today, 17    We got up early and saw Lyova and Rayevsky off to Moscow. Then I wrote a short article for the paper.85 Didn’t finish it and didn’t send it off. […]

Five days have passed. Today, 24 November, Begichevka. Got on with chapter 8 quite well. After dinner I rode to Pashkovo and visited four soup kitchens; a very joyful impression. We invited a beggar boy for supper. The children came running in. ‘We’re going to have supper.’ – ‘So am I – here’s my spoon.’ […]

25 November, Begichevka    Ivan Ivanovich is getting worse and worse.86 Yelena Pavlovna came. I wrote a bit of my article on compulsory military service.87

Today, 26 November, Begichevka    He died at 3 o’clock; I was very sorry for him. I loved him very much.

Today, 18, actually 19 December, Begichevka    Haven’t written my diary for almost a month. I’ve been in Moscow during this time. Joy. Relations with Sonya have never been so cordial. I thank Thee, Father. This is what I asked for. Everything I asked for has been granted me. I thank Thee. Grant that I may merge more closely with Thy will. I don’t want anything except what Thou wantest. Great work is in progress here. It’s catching on in other parts of Russia too. There are many good people. I thank Thee. […]

Notes

1 The Kingdom of God is Within You.

2 Renan’s L’avenir de la science.

3 A reference to The Posthumous Notes of Fyodor Kuzmich, which Tolstoy was to begin in 1905, but never finished.

4 An incident later incorporated into The Forged Coupon.

5 See 1884, Note 97.

6 See diary entry for 8 April 1890.

7 A rough draft of a story beginning ‘There was a wealthy man …’

8 Nothing came of this idea.

9 If I’m Alive. See 1888, Note 73.

10 An article by A. S. Suvorin, editor of New Times, criticising the Afterword to the Kreutzer Sonata for advocating celibacy.

11 An unfavourable review in the Berliner Tageblatt of the performance at the Residenz-Theater in Berlin of Tolstoy’s play.

12 Professor Beketov’s article Morality and Natural Science in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, 1891, No.5, did not attack Tolstoy, but Tolstoy disapproved of his attempt to base morality on evolution.

13 The Open Court, a monthly magazine published in Chicago since 1887 by Paul Carus, ‘devoted to the science of religion, the religion of science, and the extension of the religious parliament idea’. The other target of its attack was William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army.

14 His diary of the Crimean War years.

15 Our Destiny, the Influence of Socialism on Morals and Religion; an Essay in Ethics, London, 1890, by the American Laurence Gronlund. Tolstoy wrote very favourably of it in a letter to the author, and tried unsuccessfully to get it translated into Russian.

16 In What Then Must We Do?

17 In English in the diary.

18 The Kingdom of God is Within You.

19 P. P. Arbuzov, who taught Tolstoy cobbling (referred to in 1884, Note 5).

20 A Yasnaya Polyana peasant, as were Seryoga and Konstantin, mentioned later in this entry.

21 A reference to the dockers’ strike in Melbourne in 1890, reported in William Stead’s journal (1890, No.10).

22 Montaigne’s Essais and the first chapters of Ertel’s novel Change, dealing with the growing tendency for landed estates to pass into the hands of merchants and rich peasants.

23 Judas, later called Conscience; exhibited at the 19th “Itinerants” Exhibition and now in the Tretyakov Gallery.

24 Mikhaylovsky’s article On Count Lev Tolstoy and Narcotics, apropos of an English translation in the Contemporary Review of Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?

25 From Oeuvres choisies de Denis Diderot, Paris, 1884, which Tolstoy was reading at the time.

26 Probably about Ibsen, as an extract from a biographical essay on Ibsen had just appeared in the Russian Gazette. It is not known what he was reading by Heine.

27 Of volume 13 of Tolstoy’s works, published by his wife, and combining The Kreutzer Sonata and The Afterword to it. Tolstoy’s worries were to do with royalties on his writings, which he wished to renounce.

28 The first of a series of articles by A. A. Kozlov, professor of philosophy at Kiev University, in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology. It was devoted to Tolstoy’s book On Life and criticised Tolstoy for his low opinion of European philosophy and the lack of an integrated philosophy of his own.

29 In Gronlund’s book Our Destiny.

30 To intercede with the authorities who had just banned volume 13 of her edition of Tolstoy’s works.

31 James Creelman, an American correspondent and author of On the Great Highway; the Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent, New York, 1901, two chapters of which are devoted to Tolstoy, whom Creelman visited twice.

32 V. A. Behrs.

33 See 1890, Note 94.

34 Presumably another volume of Oeuvres choisies, mentioned above in Note 25.

35 A translation of Nikolay Palkin (Nicholas Stick) (Review of Reviews, 1891, No. 15).

36 A letter from Benjamin Flower, editor of the Boston journal Arena, with an article by L. J. Wilson, The Christian Doctrine of Non-resistance by Count Leo Tolstoi and the Rev. Adin Ballou. Unpublished Correspondence (Arena, 1890, No. 13).

37 By Frederick Evans, 1888.

38 Lyman Abbott’s article in the same issue of Arena (see Note 36).

39 The manuscript of Thou Shalt Not Kill.

40 Tolstoy took this thought from an article in the Russian Gazette on Schopenhauer’s ideas about writing.

41 An unfinished story Mother, based to some extent on the life of A. P. Lopukhina, a Tula friend, and concerned with the upbringing of children.

42 Tolstoy’s two youngest sons.

43 See Note 30.

44 D. D. Obolensky and I. D. Isakov, a Tula landowner and honorary justice of the peace.

45 An article by the French writer and professor of the history of literature at Geneva University entitled Les idées morales du temps présent. Le comte Tolstoi, Revue bleue, 1891, No. 13, touching on the important influence of Tolstoy and other Russian novelists on French literature.

46 Strakhov’s article Talks About L. N. Tolstoy in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology, 1891, No.9. See Letters, II, 477 for Tolstoy’s reaction to it.

47 More unfavourable reviews about the Berlin production of The Fruits of Enlightenment.

48 Diderot’s article De l’interprétation de la nature in the Oeuvres choisies.

49 Les problemes de l’esthétique contemporaine, 1884, by the French philosopher and poet Jean-Marie Guyau (not Guiyot as Tolstoy wrote). The book is mentioned several times in What is Art?

50 It was begun in the form of a diary by the mother.

51 Sonya had managed to obtain an audience of the Tsar Alexander III, in which she denied that her husband was to blame for the dissemination of his banned writings, which was the work of his sympathisers who would even go to the length of stealing his manuscripts.

52 Tolstoy’s attitude to the private ownership of property necessitated the distribution of his estates and possessions between all the members of his family except himself.

53 Howard Williams’ The Ethics of Diet, London, 1883, was later translated into Russian with a foreword by Tolstoy entitled The First Step – a powerful advocacy of vegetarianism on moral grounds.

54 In a French translation by Victor Cousin.

55 These thoughts were later developed by Tolstoy in his drama The Light Shineth in Darkness. ‘Lawn tennis’ is written in English in the diary.

56 A case of theft, which Tolstoy made use of in his description of the second day’s court session in Resurrection.

57 Tolstoy visited the Tula abattoir to collect material for his article The First Step.

58 In order to meet the woman prisoner M. F. Simonson, who had been actively involved with a Tolstoyan agricultural commune and was being sent into administrative exile for her allegedly harmful influence on people.

59 A remark from the German philosopher and physicist Lichtenberg’s Vermischte Schriften which Tolstoy included in his Cycle of Reading for 26 December.

60 Turgenev’s comedy concerning the division of an estate between a brother and sister, whose inability to agree is ridiculed by the author.

61 The date should be 17 June. (Tolstoy has returned from a short journey and is retracing the events of the previous few days.) The two following dates are also wrong: 15 June should be 13 June, and 13 June should be 11 June.

62 M. F. Kudryavtseva, a doctor’s wife and a friend of Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt, a devout Tolstoyan who spent much time at Yasnaya Polyana (Letters, II, 404–5, fn.2).

63 Kuzminskaya.

64 An episode from Björnson’s novel Det Flagen i byen og på havnen (Part 5, Chapter 4), which Tolstoy was reading in Russian translation.

65 At first Tolstoy had reservations about organised state aid to the victims of the serious famine of 1891–2, but soon changed his mind and threw himself into relief work with characteristic energy.

66 Prince K. A. Vyazemsky, mathematician, traveller and later monk, who visited Tolstoy and corresponded with him.

67 The First Step.

68 Sonya was upset by Tolstoy’s proposal to state in the newspapers that he renounced the copyright of the works published in volumes 12 and 13 of Sonya’s edition. Despite her objections he stuck to his plan. See Note 75.

69 The Light Shineth in Darkness.

70 See Note 3.

71 The subject was later incorporated into The Forged Coupon.

72 Henry Francis Prevost Battersby, an English journalist and friend of Chertkov’s, who translated What Then Must We Do? into English, and collaborated with Chertkov in the translation of What I Believe. He came to Russia in 1891 in connection with a plan by Chertkov to publish photographs of Russian paintings.

73 M. A. Novosyolov, a teacher in a Moscow grammar school who organised an agricultural community along Tolstoyan lines in the late 1880s and helped Tolstoy during the famine relief (Letters, II, 420). P. N. Gastev, a member of Novosyolov’s community, who also assisted Tolstoy in 1891–2 and left his memoirs of the experi ence.

74 A story by the Italian authoress Maria Torelli-Viollier (pseudonym La Marchesa Colombi), later published separately by The Intermediary on Tolstoy’s recommendation.

75 To the editors of the Russian Gazette and New Times granting all who so wished the right to publish free of charge all works written by him since 1881, including those printed in Sonya’s edition. For the full text see Letters, II, 483.

76 A railway station some 60 miles from Tula and 20 miles from Begichevka.

77 A reference to an account in his notebook of a journey round these districts from 19 to 21 September, of which some pages are missing.

78 Tolstoy’s article On the Famine which had been sent to Grot for publishing in Problems of Philosophy and Psychology was banned by the censor.

79 Die Waffen nieder, 1889, a novel by the German authoress B. von Suttner on the theme of pacifism, which Tolstoy read in Russian translation.

80 Tolstoy had no money of his own and had to rely on his wife for travel and other expenses for his journey to the Ryazan province. Sonya gave him 600 roubles to set up soup kitchens.

81 Of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

82 Published under the title A Terrible Problem on 6 November, 1891 in the Russian Gazette, which received a second warning from the authorities as a result.

83 This story, intended for a volume in aid of the famine victims, was never finished.

84 From Fisher Unwin, London publisher and secretary of the Russian Famine Fund. For Tolstoy’s reply see Letters, II, 488.

85 On Ways of Helping the Population Suffering from the Harvest Failure published in 1892 in the volume To Aid the Famine Victims.

86 I. I. Rayevsky died from pneumonia, contracted as a result of his work in the famine area. See entry for 26 November. Yelena Pavlovna was his wife.

87 Not a separate article, but Chapters 7 and 8 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

1892

Begichevka. Alive. A month has gone by. Today is 30 January, 1892. To remember each day in turn is impossible. I’ve been to Moscow, where I spent three weeks, and it’s now a week since I’ve been back here. The main features and events of this month: dissatisfaction with Lyova and a depressing feeling of uncharitableness towards him. The hustle and bustle, idleness and luxury, vanity and sensuality of Moscow life. Went to the theatre. Fruits of Enlightenment. I’m still writing chapter 8.1 And I still haven’t finished. Saw Solovyov, Alyokhin and Orlov – depressed by all of them – and enjoyed seeing Chertkov, Gorbunov and Tregubov. Returned here and found disorder and confusion. The distribution of materials and firewood has caused greediness. I’ve felt ill nearly all the time – my stomach – and I feel weak generally. I think more and more often of death and free myself more and more from desire for worldly fame. But I’m still very far from complete freedom. Wanted to copy out my notes into my notebooks – I’ve lost them, and am sad and jaded, and don’t feel like thinking or doing anything. Father, help me to love always.

3 February, Begichevka    Sonya left today.2 I’m sorry for her. Relations with the people are very bad. I realised today that all this begging, envy, deceit, dissatisfaction and the poverty that lies behind it all, is an indication of an exceptional situation and of the fact that we are in the middle of it. […]

Today is 24 February, Begichevka    Tanya left for Moscow today, feeling unwell.3  […] Repin has been, and left today.4 …

Today is 29 February, Begichevka    There has been a terrible snow-storm these past days. Set off again yesterday for Rozhnya, and didn’t get there again. I’ve been to Kolodezi and Karatayevo, about firewood and children’s soup kitchens. Visits from (1) Bobrinsky, (2) the Swede Stadling, (3) Vysotsky and four ‘dark people’.5  They depress me. I’m very tired. Wasn’t well during the day. Better now – quite well. I’m still writing and can’t stop.

The day before yesterday an astonishing thing happened: I was going out of doors in the morning with my chamberpot, and there was a big, healthy-looking, agile peasant geeting on for fifty with a twelve-year-old boy with beautiful, wavy fair hair curling up at the ends. ‘Where are you from?’ ‘Zatvornoye.’ That’s a village where the peasants live by begging. ‘What do you want?’ As always the tedious answer, ‘Help us, your Honour.’ ‘What do you need?’ ‘Don’t let us die of hunger. We haven’t eaten for two days.’ I was depressed. All familiar words and all learned by heart. ‘Just a moment.’ And I went in to fetch five copecks to get rid of them. The peasant went on talking and describing his situation. No heat, no bread. They go begging, nobody gives them anything. Outside, the snow and the cold. I went in to get rid of them. I looked round at the boy. His beautiful eyes were full of tears, and big glistening tear-drops were running down from one eye.

Yes, this wretched officialdom and the money make you hardened.

Today is 3 April    Haven’t written my diary for more than a month. I’m in Moscow. We arrived here, I think, on the 14th. […]

Don’t remember whether I noted down: […]

(2) I am alone, and there is such a terrible, infinite number of people, and all these people are so different, and it’s impossible for me to get to know them all – all these Indians, Malayans, Japanese, even the people who are always with me – my children, my wife … In the midst of all these people I am alone, quite alone and isolated. And the awareness of this isolation and the need for communion with all these people, and the impossibility of such communion is enough to drive me mad. The only salvation is the awareness of an inner communion with all of them through God. When you find this communion, the need for external communion will cease to worry you. […]

Today is 26 May, Yasnaya Polyana    The day before yesterday I came back from Begichevka.6 The time there passed like a single day. Everything is just the same. More depressing relations than ever with the ‘dark people’, Alyokhin, Novosyolov, Skorokhodov. The childishness and vanity of Christianity, the lack of sincerity. The work is just the same. Just as depressing and just as impossible to escape. I’d just begun to live freely there when Yevdokim7 arrived and brought chapter 8 which was in a hideous condition. Began to revise it and worked every day for a month, continued revising it and am still revising it now. I think I’ve almost reached the end. […]

Today is 5 July, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve hardly written anything for a month and a half. I’ve been to Begichevka during this time and come back again, and now I’ve been at Yasnaya for more than two weeks. I’m staying on for the division of the property.8 It’s, depressing, terribly painful. I pray that God will rescue me. But how? Not as I will, but as He wills. If only He could suppress the uncharitableness in me. Yesterday there was an astonishing conversation among the children. Tanya and Lyova were suggesting to Masha that she was playing a mean trick by refusing her property. Her conduct makes them feel the wrongness of their own, but they must be in the right themselves and so they are trying to invent reasons why her conduct is bad and a mean trick. It’s terrible. I can’t write. I wept, and I could weep again. They say: ‘We would like to do it ourselves, but it would be wrong.’ My wife says to them: ‘Leave it to me.’ They don’t say anything. It’s terrible! I’ve never seen lies and the motives for them so palpably obvious. I’m sad, sad, and sorely depressed. […]

When leaving Begichevka I was struck, as I’m often struck now, by pictures of nature. 5 o’clock in the morning. Mist, people washing in the river. Everything shrouded in mist. Wet leaves glistening nearby.

Thought during this time: […]

(2) When you have lived a long time – as I’ve lived forty-five years of conscious life – you understand how false and impossible are all attempts to adapt yourself to life. There is nothing stable9 in life. It’s like trying to adapt yourself to running water. Everything – individuals, families, societies – everything changes, melts away and reshapes itself, as clouds do. And there’s no time to get used to one state of society before it no longer exists and has changed into another. […]

6 August    Terrible to think: a month has passed. Today is 6 August. I’ve been to Begichevka again. Finished things there. I’ll carry on from here. Apathy; great weakness. Chapter 8 is finished, but I’m still toiling away on chapters 9 and 10. And I’m beginning to think I’m thrashing about on the spot. The division of the property is finished. Sent for Popov. He’s living with us, copying and writing. Strakhov came again. I’ve let myself go very much morally. That’s because of my writing, and the thought that I’m doing an important thing – a work which, although it doesn’t release me from the obligations of life, is one which is more important than the others. Prayer has become a formality. […]

Thought: (1) I remembered just now sitting in a steam bath and a shepherd boy coming into the anteroom. I asked: ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Me.’ ‘Who’s me?’ ‘It’s me.’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘I’ve said, me.’ For him, the only person living in the world, it was so incomprehensible that anyone could fail to know the only thing that exists. And everyone is the same. […]

Today is 9 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Wrote a bit better yesterday. I’m still as dissatisfied with myself: no love for anything. Least of all for myself, it’s true, but still – no love. At dinner yesterday a trivial episode about mushrooms and a prohibition on picking them grieved me very sorely. I ought to be ashamed of it. Thought a lot, but didn’t write anything down and don’t remember anything. Yesterday I read Boborykin’s Corpse;10 very good. Lyova arrived. Got on all right with him. Wrote better today, but didn’t write much. Went mushrooming with Sasha. Very pleasant. Yesterday I wrote a letter to Dillon apropos of Leskov’s letter.11 Popov and Butkevich came. In the evening Tanya arrived with a mass of people as well. They’re now playing the violin upstairs. Read a story by some young lady – a bad one. […]

Today is 21 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Feel just as jaded as ever, entirely immersed in my article which I still haven’t finished. […] Thought during this time:

(1) A talk about upbringing. Sonya said that she saw that she had brought the children up badly, and that they were ruined physically and morally. But what was she to do? It’s as if everyone were to say: ‘It doesn’t matter what’s good or bad somewhere else, but I have only one life, and the children have only one life. And I’ll ruin this one life, I can’t avoid it! […]

(5) This isn’t a thought, but on 13 August I made a note that it had become clear to me – not in a moment of anger but in a very peaceful moment – that I might, and probably will have to leave home.

(6) Spoke about music. I said again that this pleasure is only a little superior in its kind to eating. I don’t want to offend music, but I do want clarity. And I can’t accept what people say with such obscurity and vagueness, namely that music somehow elevates the soul. The point is that it isn’t a moral thing. It’s not immoral, any more than eating – it’s neutral, but not moral. I stand by that. And if it isn’t a moral thing, one’s attitude to it is quite different.

Today is 15 September, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s two days since I returned from Begichevka, where I spent three good days. Wrote a draft report and conclusion. A depressingly painful impression made on me by a train full of officials and soldiers, going to put down a riot.12 All this time when I haven’t been writing my diary, I’ve been living in just the same way. As far as my strength allowed I worked on chapters 8, 9 and 10, and finished the first two. But I only made a mess of the 10th. There’s still no real conclusion. But I think it’s getting clearer. […] Noted down during this time. […]

(3) The conditions of life, clothing and habits which remain with a man after he has changed his way of life are like the clothing worn by an actor who, because of a fire in the middle of a play, runs out into the street in his costume and greasepaint. […]

1 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything the same: the same persistent work, the same slow progress and the same dissatisfaction with myself. However, things are a bit better. Went to Kozlovka today and thought for the first time: however terrible it is to think so and say so, but the purpose of life is just as little the reproduction of the likes of us, the continuation of the species, as it is the service of other people or even the service of God. The reproduction of the likes of us. Why? To serve people. But what are they to do, the people we serve? To serve God? But surely He can do what He needs to without us. And anyway He can’t need anything. If he bids us serve Him, it’s only for our own good. Life can’t have any other purpose except good, except joy. Only this purpose – joy – is fully worthy of life. Renunciation, the cross, giving up life – it’s all for the sake of joy. And joy exists, and can be permanent and indestructible. And death is a transition to a new, unknown, completely new, different and greater joy. And there are sources of joy which never dry up: the beauty of nature, animals and human beings which is never absent. In prison – the beauty of a sunbeam, of a fly, or of sounds. And the main source is love – my love for people and their love for me. How good it would be if this were true. Am I discovering something new? Beauty, joy – simply as joy, independently of good – is disgusting. I found this out and gave it up. Good without beauty is painful. It’s only the combination of the two; and not the combination, but beauty as the crown of good. I think that’s something like the truth. I’m reading Amiel13 – not bad.

Today is 7 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Everything the same. The same persistent work and slow progress. During this time my elder sons came. It was nice and good to be with them. But they’re very weak. A talk with Lyova. He’s closer to me than the others. The main thing is, he is good and loves the good (God). Amiel is very good. […]

(2) I’d like to write a foreword to Amiel,14 in which I could express what he says in many places about what a new Christianity should consist of, what religion should be like in future. And meanwhile he himself lives partly by Stoicism, partly by Buddhism, partly – mainly – by Christianity as he understands it – and will die with it. Like the bourgeois gentilhomme, he fait de la religion sans le savoir [practises religion without knowing it].15 That’s probably the best religion. He isn’t tempted to hold it up for admiration.

(3) If I were given the choice whether to people the earth with the best saints imaginable, but with no children, or with people as they are now, but with children constantly arriving fresh from God, I would choose the latter.

(4) Turgenev’s Enough and Hamlet and Don Quixote are the negation of a worldly life and the affirmation of a Christian one.16 One could write a good article about that. […]

6 November    Haven’t written my diary for almost a month. Today is 6 November. […] Made the following notes: […]

(5) A letter from Strakhov about the decadents.17 It’s art for art’s sake again. Narrow hose and breeches again after wide ones, but with a touch of modern times. Today’s decadents like Baudelaire say that poetry needs extremes of good and extremes of evil. That without them there is no poetry. That striving towards good alone destroys contrasts and therefore poetry. They’ve no need to worry. Evil is so strong – it’s the background to everything – that it’s always there for contrast. But if you accept it, it will cover everything up; there will be only evil and there will be no contrast. In fact there won’t even be evil – there won’t be anything. For there to be a contrast and for there to be evil, we must strive with all our power towards good.

During this time a student from the medical academy, Sobolevsky, has been to try and reform me and to suggest to me that the concept of God is a vestige of barbarism. I got shamefully worked up over his stupidity, and said a lot of rude things and distressed him.

Notes

1 Of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

2 She had been at Begichevka since 24 January.

3 Tanya Kuzminskaya had been at Begichevka since 28 October, helping with the famine relief.

4 Repin spent three days in Begichevka and did some drawings of Tolstoy talking to the peasants.

5 (1) Count V. A. Bobrinsky, a big landowner in the Bogoroditsk province. (2) Jonas Stadling, an American of Swedish extraction, author of several books on Russia including In the Land of Tolstoi; Experiences of Famine and Misrule in Russia, 1897 and an article in the Century – With Tolstoi in the Russian Famine, 1893, No.46. He spent some time in Begichevka and travelled with Tolstoy to the Samara province. (3) K. A. Vysotsky owned a farm in the area and worked for several months at Begichevka. The ‘dark people’ referred to included the Alyokhin brothers.

6 During the previous two months he had been to Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana, Begichevka and back again to Yasnaya Polyana.

7 Y. P. Sokolov, a peasant who worked for Chertkov as a copyist.

8 The legal document dividing all Tolstoy’s property between his wife and children had been signed on 7 June.

9 In English in the diary.

10 A story published in 1892 by the prolific novelist, short story writer and critic P. D. Boborykin, whose candidature for election to the Academy of Sciences was supported by Tolstoy and who wrote about him in an article At Tolstoy’s House in Moscow (Letters, I, 196).

11 Leskov asked Tolstoy to support Dillon who had been attacked for his translation in the Daily Telegraph of Tolstoy’s article.

12 A riot caused by peasants resisting the felling of a wood belonging to them by Count Bobrinsky – an episode which Tolstoy wrote about in Chapter 12 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

13 Henri-Frédéric Amiel, diarist and critic who spent most of his life as a professor at Geneva University. Tolstoy was reading his Fragments d’un journal intime, published posthumously, 1883–7.

14 In December 1893 Tolstoy wrote a foreword to his daughter Masha’s Russian translation of Amiel’s diary, which was published the following year.

15 A reference to M. Jourdain in Molière’s play, who spoke prose without realising it.

16 See Tolstoy’s further comments on these works in his letter to A. N. Pypin of 10 January 1884 (Letters, II, 364–5).

17 Apparently prompted by a lecture of Merezhkovsky’s on decadent trends in modern Russian literature (although Strakhov’s letter has not survived).

1893

5 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Terrible to think, I haven’t written my diary since 6 November 1892, i.e. six months except for a day. All this time I’ve been strenuously occupied with my book: with the last chapter,1 and I still haven’t quite finished.

Yesterday, 4 May, we arrived at Yasnaya from Moscow, where I spent all winter, with a break. Owing to my strenuous work (I don’t think I missed a single day) I seem to have let myself go in my physical life – actually in physical work. But in many respects, especially in the demands on myself not to take part in the evil of the world, I’ve become more resolute. Much has become clear during this time in the course of work; the problem of free will: man is free in the spiritual world, in that which sets the physical world in motion.

We’ve been to Begichevka during this time. Indifference to the vulgar business of aid, and disgust with hypocrisy. The sympathy people expressed for my activity was joy at the transformation of the critic of hypocrisy into a party to it.

Events during this time: Lyova’s return from Petersburg and his illness.2 My relations with the other members of the family are just the same. The two boys, Andryusha and Misha, especially Misha, are in a very bad and aloof frame of mind. Masha has been infatuated, and has come to her senses again.3 Now Bulygin is here. He and Rayev have been on trial, and are waging a struggle.4 Generally speaking I think that in our country the struggle between Christianity and paganism is beginning, éclate [is breaking out]. One must know this and be prepared. Today is the first day that I haven’t got on with my book. I still don’t know what I shall write. I’ve had many thoughts during this time which have come to nothing. I remember:

(1) A work of dramatic art, which reveals most evidently the essence of any art, consists in presenting people of the most diverse characters and situations, putting before them and confronting them all with the need to solve a vital problem not previously solved by people, and making them act and observe in order to find out how this problem can be solved. It’s a laboratory experiment. I would like to do this in my next drama.5 […]

14 May, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve missed a week. I haven’t noticed how it passed. Sent it off yesterday and had done with it.6 If it’s bad, it’s bad. I was ill, and that particularly spurred me on to finish it: I’m free. I’m re-reading things begun earlier. I don’t know yet what to start on. I’ve been feeling very bad all this time. I’m dissatisfied with my situation, and suffer agonies. I want an outward change. But I oughtn’t to.

15 May and, I think, 16, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought: it’s astounding: the plundering of land in our Kherson, Samara and other provinces7 – and the magnificence of Moscow, the arches to welcome the Tsar, and the illuminations.8  Or the Chicago exhibition,9 and the destruction of forests and the desecration of land. And science is going to put all this right for us by artificial rain produced by electricity. Terrible! 98 per cent will be destroyed and 2 per cent restored.

23 May, Begichevka10    […] Thought during this time: […]

(4) The first leaves have just appeared on the birch trees, and are rippling gaily in the warm wind. Evening. It’s growing dark after the storm. The horses have just been let out, and are nibbling the grass greedily and waving their tails.

(5) Tried to remember: what has marriage given me? It’s terrible to say. It’s probably the same for everybody.

(6) Two conventions are equally strong: for a man – putting up with a box on the ears without a duel; for a woman – being married without the Church’s blessing. […]

5 June, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve kept trying to write an afterword,11 tying it up with the definition of life as a movement from the unreasonable to the reasonable, but haven’t made any progress, whether from physical or mental causes, I don’t know. During this time I’ve tried to work – to chop wooden stakes – and have been to Bulygin’s. […]

I’m going to Tula now. Thought during this time:

(1) I was struck by the thought that one of the main causes of hostile feelings between husbands and wives is their rivalry over the business of managing the family. A wife mustn’t admit that her husband is reasonable and practical, because if she did, she would have to do his will, and vice versa. If I were writing The Kreutzer Sonata now I would introduce this idea. […]

(3) The Chicago exhibition, like all exhibitions, is a striking example of imprudence and hypocrisy: everything is done for profit and amusement – from boredom – but noble aims of love of the people are ascribed to it. Orgies are better. […]

(6) Read about an article by Max Nordau.12 He puts it very well that our belles lettres ought rather to become an amusement for women and children, like dancing.

(7) All this art and music is all right, but it obviously occupies an inappropriate place. […]

10 June, Yasnaya Polyana    All this time I’ve done nothing definite. Began the afterword, then the articles on science and art,13 and now something on Zola’s letter and Dumas.14 Popov left, Posha came. My relations with people are just the same. Thought during this time: […]

(2) My childhood friend,15 a lost soul, a drunkard, a glutton, an unhappy, lazy and untruthful person, always, when the subject of children and upbringing is mentioned, brings up his own childhood and upbringing as an example, as though implying indisputably that the result of his upbringing is proof of its success. And he does it unintentionally, and doesn’t see how funny it is. So strong is the love and predilection which all people have for themselves. […]

(9) Religion is not what people believe in, and science is not what people study, but religion is what gives meaning to life, and science is what people need to know.

21 June, Yasnaya Polyana    The day before yesterday I sent off with Kuzminsky an article about Zola’s and Dumas’ letters to the Revue de Families.16 All this time I’ve amused myself dividing my thoughts between On Art, the afterword and this article. Tried to work – I’ve grown too weak. Masha came. I was very glad to see her. Yesterday there was an unpleasant conversation with Sonya – something that hasn’t happened for a long time. ‘They are suffering, the poor people.’ ‘One ought to be sorry for them, but you get too excited.’ However, it was all so quiet that nobody noticed it. It just hurt me very much. […]

Today is 18 July, Begichevka    Haven’t written my diary for a terribly long time. During this time I’ve been writing an article about the letters of Zola and Dumas. Still haven’t sent it off. Left for Begichevka on the 10th. We’ve passed the time well here. I’ve been winding up the business.17 Had many good thoughts and kept forgetting them. I’ll note down a few things: […]

(2) Mankind has always lived in such a way that woman has been ruled by man; suddenly it transpires that women ought not to be ruled, but are themselves the rulers.

(3) If robbers seize power and wealth, the people who will control that power and wealth are the ones who act basely and indulge the robbers, i.e. the basest people. That’s why power is in the hands of women. […]

(5) The form of the novel is not only not everlasting, but is already dying out. One is ashamed to write untruths, to say something happened that didn’t happen. If you want to say something, say it frankly.

19 July    I continue:

(9) Millions of people have existed for thousands of years and have not lived on meat and have rested regularly on the 7th day. And now science has discovered on the first question that one can’t live on vegetable food without meat; but on the second, it has come to the conclusion, after making a series of experiments (putting a man in a cage and making him rotate a stone) that rest on the 7th day is necessary. If they hadn’t amassed money by robbery to buy meat with, and if they had had to work themselves, they would long since have come to the undoubtedly correct solution of the first problem, and would have discovered without experiments in cages how necessary it is to rest on the 7th day. […]

(10) Women, like Jews, pay for the slavery in which they have been kept by enslaving men. And serve us right. But we oughtn’t to submit, but ought to eliminate in ourselves that weakness by which they try to capture us. […]

(11) Art, they say, cannot abide mediocrity. Nor can it abide being too deliberate. I am a singer, I have greased my hair, put on a frock coat and necktie and am going to stand on a platform and sing to you. And I am quite cold and feel disgusted. But a wet-nurse and a nanny go for a walk in the garden and one sings a folk song in a quiet voice and the other echoes it. Besides, it’s terribly difficult to sing loudly and well.

Today is 16 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Almost a month. And I’ve lived through a great deal. Firstly, I’ve finished my work with the famine victims. Secondly, Chertkov and Posha have been. I finished and sent off an article Non-action both in French and Russian;18 and thirdly, and most important, an excerpt from my book appeared abroad about the Oryol affair, and sparked off a lot of fuss and bother and reactions and misunderstandings and slanderous remarks.19 Yesterday Sonya and the Kuzminskys read it and pointed out to me some inaccuracies:

(1) people being hanged in the villages, (2) people being beaten all the time, (3) abuse of Zinovyev20 (Zinovyev read it in Stockholm and was very offended, distressed and angered). Telegrams were sent off today asking all the translators to stop publication.21 I think it’s too late. Woke up last night and began to have painful thoughts. Had the same painful thoughts in the evening too. And I felt worse and worse, and was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. […]

The most important event during this time was the business that started between Masha and Zander.22 She was very pitiable. Now she has recovered and, it seems, has refused him, but the unpleasantness and the tangle of lies over the whole business isn’t over yet. […]

Thought: (1) It sometimes happens that a man suddenly begins to defend angrily a position which in your view is most unimportant. You think it’s a brick, and it costs him no more than three copecks. But for him this brick is the keystone of the arch on which his whole life is built. […]

(5) A conversation with social democrats (young men and women). They say: ‘The capitalist system will pass into the hands of the workers, and then there won’t be any more oppression of the workers and unfair distribution of wages.’ ‘But who will set up the works and manage them?’ I asked. ‘That will come of its own accord, the workers will run things themselves.’ ‘But surely the capitalist system was only established because managers with authority are needed for any practical job. Once there is a job there will be leaders, there will be managers with authority. And once there is authority, there will be abuse of it, – the very thing you are fighting against now.’

(6) What is better for a man and a woman: to flirt and make friends at a ball, or over the bed of a typhus patient? The first is better.

(7) It is impossible to say not only whether the life a person leads is useful or useless, but even whether it is joyful or not. It will only be known subsequently, when it can be seen as a whole. It’s the same with work. Ask a ploughman while he’s working whether his life is joyful or not. He doesn’t know, and rather thinks that the idle life of a rich man is joyful, but ask him when he’s an old man and he will recall his own life.

(8) August 11, morning    A blue haze; the dew seems to be sewn on to the grass, bushes and trees to a height of a sazhen. Apple trees are bowed beneath their weight. From a log cabin comes the fragrant smoke of fresh brushwood. And over there, in a bright-yellow field, the dew is already drying out on the fine oat stubble and work has begun, binding, carting, scything and, in a violet-coloured field, ploughing. Everywhere along the roads and caught in the branches of trees are torn off broken ears of corn. Gaily dressed young girls are weeding a dewy flowerbed and quietly singing, and man-servants in aprons are bustling about. A lap dog is warming itself in the sun. The gentlemen haven’t got up yet. […]

23 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Missed five days. Strakhov and Salomon23 have been. My restlessness has subsided. But my idleness hasn’t ceased. I’m trying to write about religion,24 but it’s no good. […] An unpleasant conversation with Strakhov. He says he doesn’t see any necessary connection between the wealth of the rich and the poverty of the poor. Astonishing. […] Thought during this time:

(3) I imagined to myself a prosecutor or policeman demanding from me a signed undertaking not to write any more, or something similar, and saying ‘I am acting on the highest orders.’ There can’t be any highest orders, because mine are the highest – to defend my brothers and to denounce their persecutors. There are only two ways of forcing me to be silent: either to stop doing what I denounce, or else to kill me or imprison me for life; in actual fact only the first; and so tell the people who sent you to stop doing what they are doing. […]

[5 October]    It’s terrible to look at the last date in my diary, so long is it since I last wrote: exactly a month. Today is 5 October, Yasnaya Polyana. What has happened during this time? Lyova is still not better. A struggle with Masha. I wrote to Zander; he wrote to me. Masha wrote him a bad letter. This grieved me very much. One mustn’t prevent them from living, prevent them from making mistakes, prevent them from suffering and repenting and so making progress. Tanya has gone to Moscow to take Sonya’s place. Sonya is now on her way here. Popov is here. He and I have been translating Lao-Tzu from Strauss’ German version.25 How good it is! I must make a book out of it. All the time I’ve been writing the article on religion. I think I’ve finished. Also wrote in rough an article about Maupassant.26 That’s all. Few thoughts and few notes. Here they are:

(1) A science – prisonology.27

(2) There are two sorts of minds: one mind is logical, egotistical, narrow and long, and the other is sensitive, sympathetic, broad and short.

(3) There are two methods of knowing the external world: one is the very crude and unavoidable method of knowing it through the five senses. We would be able to piece together a picture of the world that we know from this method of knowing, but the result would be chaos, affording us various sensations. The other method is to know yourself through love of yourself, and then to know other creatures through love of these creatures: to transfer oneself in thought into another person, animal, plant or even stone. By this method you will know from within and form a picture of the whole world as we know it. This method is what is called the poetic gift; it is in fact love. It is the restoration of the seemingly broken unity between creatures. You go out of yourself and enter into another person. And you can enter into everything. Everything – you can merge with God, with Everything. […]

(8) They say that one swallow doesn’t make a summer; but, because one swallow doesn’t make a summer, would that swallow which already senses summer not fly in, but wait? In that case every bud and blade of grass will have to wait, and there will be no summer. […]

(15) It is actually their wives that husbands hate, as Lessing said: there is only one bad woman, and that is my wife.28 Women themselves are to blame for this because of their deceitfulness and their play-acting. They all perform a comedy in front of others, but can’t go on performing it behind the scenes in front of their husbands, and so a husband knows that all women are reasonable and good, but he knows that his wife alone is not. That’s all. Other things that have happened are that the Revue des Revues printed a foul translation of Non-action and that distressed me, and also that for about three weeks now I’ve completely given up tea, coffee, sugar, and above all milk, and I only feel healthier for it. 10 o’clock at night.

[3 November]    Haven’t written for almost a month. Today is 3 November, Yasnaya Polyana. Masha and I have been living on our own for two or three weeks now. It’s very good. She has calmed down completely. Lyova is going abroad. He’s not better. Le salut est en vous has come out.29 I’ve finished the article on religion. Got on with Toulon30 and am not sending it off. During this time I had few thoughts, and what I did think, I didn’t note down. […]

Today is 22 December,    and I’ve been in Moscow more than a month. And I haven’t written my diary once. I’m depressed and disgusted. I can’t get the better of myself. I want to do something heroic. I want to devote the rest of my life to the service of God. But He doesn’t want me. Or doesn’t want me to go the way I want to. And I grumble. This luxury. This sale of books.31 This moral filth. This fuss and bother. I can’t overcome my melancholy. The main thing is I want to suffer, I want to shout out the truth which is burning me.

During this time a lot has happened. First, the fact that I’ve been dragged here. Sonya was suffering and pining so much, it was so obvious from her letters, that I came. Secondly, the fact that I wrote a foreword to Amiel. Thirdly – the hard and unending work on Toulon which I can’t give up. I’ve also written some fables32 – haven’t finished them. Some good letters from Lyova. A new joy. With the girls it’s neither one thing nor the other. Masha – medicine. Tanya – painting.33  The other day the musician Shor34 was here. I had a good talk with him about music, and for the first time the true importance of art, even dramatic art, became clear to me. That will be the first of my thoughts during this time.

Other things that have happened during this time: Sabatier’s book on St Francis.35 It awakened memories in me of my former passion for the good, for the full, active, living fulfilment of the truth. Then Amiel, whom I re-read, and now Williams’ new book True Son of Liberty.36 Excellent. Made me want to write a drama. I sometimes think that I’m finished, and am no longer able to write. And I’m sad, as though I could go on writing on my death bed or even after death. It was wrong of me to have written in my notebook soon after arriving in Moscow that I had forgotten God. How terrible it is to forget God. And it happens imperceptibly. Things done for God are replaced by things done for people, for fame, and then for oneself, for one’s own nasty self. And when you stumble over such nastiness, you want to pick yourself up again.

(1) The vagueness of the definition of art or music for example, arises from the fact that we want to ascribe to them an importance corresponding to the uncharacteristically high position we have placed them in. Their importance is: (1) their help in transmitting one’s feelings and thoughts by word; the summoning up of a mood appropriate to what is being transmitted, and (2) the fact that they are harmless, and even useful, in comparison with all other pleasures, and consequently are the most useful of all pleasures. […]

(7) Our Liberals are like sectarian Old Believers. Their principles have been crystallised and petrified by everything. And all they can understand is their attitude to the government, arguments about fingers, etc. Any other attitude to what they are fighting against seems to them not only alien, but inimical.

(8) I look at women students with their books and notebooks running from lecture to lecture. Women painters, women musicians. They can do everything. And, like apes, they have copied everything from men. The one thing women can’t do (girls still can) is to provide moral impetus. […]

Notes

1 Chapter 12 of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

2 Tolstoy’s son was suffering from neurasthenia.

3 By P. I. Rayevsky.

4 Bulygin and P. A. Rayev, a Tolstoyan sympathiser, had opened a school for local children on their farm without permission. They were sentenced to a fine or a month’s imprisonment, and the school was closed.

5 The Light Shineth in Darkness.

6 The last chapter of The Kingdom of God is Within You.

7 Land intended for settlement by the local landless population was being sold on very favourable terms to government officials.

8 To mark Alexander III’s recent arrival in Moscow.

9 To commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America.

10 Tolstoy and his daughter Tatyana spent a few days in the Begichevka area taking stock of the situation.

11 To The Kingdom of God is Within You, which was begun but never finished.

12 Tolstoy read an article by I. I. Ivanov in the Russian Gazette about the Hungarian-born German Jewish novelist, critic and publicist Max Nordau entitled A Writer’s Notes. Max Nordau. Entartung. Zweiter Band, Berlin, 1893.

13 The various manuscript drafts on science and art which Chertkov had just returned to Tolstoy.

14 More correctly, Zola’s speech at a Paris banquet calling on the young generation to discard outworn beliefs and put their faith in science and work, and Dumas fils’ letter to the journal Gaulois with its emphasis on the ideal of loving one another. The editor of Revue des Revues sent newspaper cuttings to Tolstoy about the different standpoints of Zola and Dumas, and as a result he began writing the article Non-action.

15 K. A. Islavin.

16 The article Non-action. The French journal did not publish it.

17 Of the famine relief. This was his last visit to Begichevka.

18 Non-action was published in Russian in the Northern Herald, 1893, No.9. It came out in Revue des Revues in October 1893 in a bad French translation, as Tolstoy complained later in his diary entry for 5 October.

19 Chapter 12 of The Kingdom of God is Within You with the episode of the punitive expedition to quell a peasant riot referred to in 1892, Note 12.

20 N. A. Zinovyev was head of the punitive expedition.

21 Tolstoy’s wife had insisted that the telegrams be sent to the translators in Paris, Berlin and Boston, followed by letters with amendments to the original text.

22 Masha had fallen in love with N. A. Zander, a young doctor temporarily engaged as a resident tutor to Tolstoy’s younger sons, but Tolstoy and his wife both opposed the match, and Zander left Yasnaya Polyana at the end of July.

23 Charles Salomon, a French industrialist who translated some of Tolstoy’s works into French and wrote several articles about him. They corresponded frequently and Salomon visited Yasnaya Polyana several times.

24 The article was eventually entitled Religion and Morality.

25 They used both German and French translations of Lao-Tzu. Tao-te-king, but never completed their Russian version.

26 A foreword to the Works of Guy de Maupassant.

27 Tolstoy’s coinage.

28 Lessing’s epigram Das böse Weib (Ein einzig böses Weib lebt höchstens in der Welt: Nur schlimm, dass jeder seins für dieses einz’ge hält).

29 A French translation by Halpérine [Galperinj-Kaminsky.

30 The original title of Christianity and Patriotism, so called because of the presence of a Russian naval squadron in Toulon in 1893 to mark the conclusion of a Franco-Russian alliance.

31 By Tolstoy’s wife, despite Tolstoy’s letter renouncing the copyright of his works.

32 Three Fables, not finished until 1895.

33 Masha had wanted to enrol as a medical student; Tanya had already qualified as an artist and had her own studio.

34 D. S. Shor, a pianist and professor at the Moscow Conservatoire.

35 Charles Paul-Marie Sabatier’s Vie de Saint François d’Assise. Tolstoy asked the author’s permission for the book to be translated into Russian. This was given and a Russian translation was published by The Intermediary in 1898.

36 A True Son of Liberty; or the Man who would not be a Patriot, New York, 1893, by Frank Purdy Williams, an American writer and follower of Henry George.

1894

[24 January] Grinyovka    Again a month and two days without writing my diary. Today is 24 January, Grinyovka. At Ilyusha’s. He’s abroad. This month has been hard. I’ve only been writing Toulon. I’ve made some progress. But generally it’s poor. Things that have happened during this time: (1) About three weeks ago I wrote a letter to the Tsar about Khilkov and his children.1 I’ve been waiting for a reply and rejoicing in my freedom. The letter wasn’t good. There was more awareness of my own independence than love. (2) While working – fetching water – I overstrained myself in the frosty weather, and something happened to my chest. Since then I’ve felt weakness and the nearness of death much more keenly. (3) A stupid situation at the congress of naturalists, which I found very unpleasant.2 (4) The weight of the empty, luxurious and false Moscow life and of the difficult, or rather non-existent relations with my wife has been particularly burdensome to me. She couldn’t, and then didn’t wish to understand, and this sin torments her – her and me, but chiefly her. The girls are good. They and Lyova bring me joy. Lyova’s latest letter. He’s angry with me for tolerating this ugly life which is ruining the children growing up. I feel I’m to blame. But I was to blame before. Now I can’t do anything more. My daughter-in-law Sonya has been left alone, and we decided to visit her. Again the same friction and pain. [One and a half lines erased.]

Lord, help me. Teach me how to bear this cross. I am constantly preparing myself for the cross I know, for prison or the gallows, but this is a completely new and different one, and I don’t know how to bear it. Its main characteristic and novelty is that I’ve been placed in this enforced, involuntary, crazy situation of being bound by my life to destroy the one thing I live for, am bound by this life to repel people from the truth, the elucidation of which is dearer to me than life. What a worthless creature I must be. I can’t tear apart all these nasty cobwebs which hold me fast. And not because I haven’t the strength, but because I’m morally unable to; I’m sorry for the spiders which spun these threads. No, the main thing is I’m no good: I’ve no true faith or love of God – the truth. But what then do I love if not God – the truth? […] Thought during this time:

(1) One can’t get rid of the illusion that acquaintance with new people brings new knowledge; that the more people there are the more intelligence and goodness there is, just as the more hot coals there are, the more heat. With people it’s not like that at all. They are always the same everywhere – in the past and in the present, in the country and in the town, one’s own people and foreigners, Russians, Icelanders and Chinese. And the more there are of them together, the sooner these coals burn out, and the less intelligence and kindness there is in them. […]

(5) We went to Ilyusha’s. In the morning I saw peasants walking about in a snow-storm in bast shoes and driving about bringing fodder for Ilyusha’s horses and cows. In the house an old cook and a little girl were working for him and his family. And I became so clearly and terribly aware of the universal enslavement of this unfortunate people. Both here and at Ilyusha’s – Ilyusha who was recently a child, a boy – even at his house the same people, turned into slaves, are working for him. How can these chains be broken? Lord, help me, if it is Thou who hast revealed this to me so clearly and dost so urge me on. […]

Today is 9 February, Yasnaya Polyana    Still the same physical and mental weakness in me. The work on Toulon is going just as badly. A lot of mediocre endings, but no really forceful one. Perhaps it’s because the beginning is so superficial. For me it continues to be serious and important. Drozhzhin has died,3 tormented by the government. No reply from the Tsar, and I don’t know whether he read the letter. Chertkov has been unwell, but is better now and writing, but he hasn’t come yet. Thought during this time with terrible force about the meaning of my life, but can’t express even 1/100th part of what I felt. Thought: […]

(3) A clear idea occurred to me for a story in which I could present two men: the one a dissipated man who has gone astray, and had fallen into contempt merely out of kindness; the other – outwardly unblemished, honoured, and respected out of coldness, not love.4 […]

23 March, Moscow    And I’m alive. I haven’t written in this exercise book for nearly six weeks. All that time I’ve been writing Toulon and finished it about five days ago and decided not to have it translated or printed.5 And this was a relief to me. Posha has returned. Khilkova has been. The letter had no effect – or rather a harmful one.

An important and painful event – the relations that have developed between Tanya and     .6 The most pure, good and friendly relations, but exclusive ones. It was a secret falling in love. She told me, and I spoke with him. They decided to discard all that was excessive and exclusive about it. He went away. This aroused in me a painful and nasty feeling – of humiliation for her. Tanya went to see Lyova in Paris, and it’s a week since they returned. He is a good, moral person, but his illness oppresses him all the time. Relations with Sonya are good, but … I’m getting ready to go to Chertkov’s. Busy again with the theory of art, apropos of the foreword to Maupassant. The foreword isn’t a success either. There’s a lot I want to write, but I don’t seem to have the strength. I must try something purely literary. Thought during this time:

(1) Art is only true art when the inner striving coincides with the awareness of fulfilling the work of God; it is possible to strive to express what interests one but is not needed by God, and it is possible to strive by a work of art to assist the work of God, but without the inner striving towards it, it will not be art.

(2) a work of art is something which infects people, and brings them all round to the same mood. Nothing exercises such a powerful influence in subordinating all people to one and the same mood as the business of life and, ultimately, the whole life of mankind. If only enough people could understand the whole significance and force of that work of art which is their life! If only they could cherish it carefully enough, apply all their powers to prevent it from being spoiled by anything, and to bring it forth in all its beauty. But as it is, we cherish the reflection of life, while life itself we despise. But whether we wish it or not, life is a work of art, because it influences other people and is contemplated by them.

(3) Lose people?! We say: I have lost my wife, husband or father, when they are dead. But it’s very, very often the case that we lose people who are not dead: we move so far apart from them that they are worse than dead. And conversely, it’s often only when people are dying that we find them and draw near to them. […]

(5) Beauty is a name we now give only to something which we like. But for the Greeks it was something mysterious, something divine, something only just being discovered for the first time. […]

21 April, Moscow    Haven’t written my diary for almost a month. During this time I’ve been to Chertkov’s with Masha. A splendid journey. Visited both the Chertkovs and the Rusanovs. The journey was poisoned by trying to unravel Tanya’s difficult affair.7 How weak they are, poor people! (Just as we are too.) I read their diaries. It was painful and also good. This has drawn me still closer to Tanya. She has impressed me by her attractiveness and grace. And she is such a small, insecure, weak, but nice young girl. Both of them have somehow let themselves go. However, we’re all just the same. I keep thinking that we have explained everything to ourselves, our situation, our vocation, and are ready for action, for struggle and for sacrifice, but there is no struggle, no sacrifice, no exertion, and we are bored. It’s true, we ourselves are to blame for not having been able to free ourselves from temptations without destroying love, and that’s the reason why we have nothing to do. But whether we are to blame or not, the point is that we have nothing to do except to want our ideas to spread. And that isn’t a task – it happens of its own accord. One must wait resolutely and be ready for the hour when the call comes to action. I loved Galya and thought highly of her. And I loved Rusanova and her children very much.

Lyova is getting better. We are just as close, but for some reason not in the same way as I am with the girls. Seryozha has been. I had a very difficult talk with him. He is angry with me and also with the girls because they are making progress and he isn’t. [A few words erased.] He’s self-assured, with an incommensurate denominator.8 But on the other hand, what joy it would be if he were to come to his senses! Ilyusha is a child, but one who deliberately persists in his crazy ways – unfortunately he still has the means to. With Sonya relations are good. Thought yesterday, as I observed her attitude towards Andryusha and Misha: what a wonderful mother and wife she is in a certain sense. I suppose Fet is right that everyone gets the wife he needs. Andryusha is jolly and kind, but stupid, imitative and vain. Misha I found very unpleasant because of his egoism, but things are better now.

All this time I’ve been writing a foreword to Maupassant which I think is quite clear now, and also a catechism which I was wrong to undertake before finishing what I’d started.9 And then I also have the article on art which Chertkov gave me10 and which I approved, but I’ve now begun to revise it again. Toulon I’ve decided to send to the translators. Everyone approves of it. […]

3 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Read an astonishingly naive article yesterday by a professor at Kazan University, Kapustin, about flavouring substances.11 He wants to show that everything that people use – sugar, wine, tobacco, even opium – is necessary in a physiological sense. This stupid, naive article was highly useful to me; it showed me clearly what the hypocrites of science suppose the business of science to be. Not what it ought to be – a definition of what should be – but a description of what is. A complete perversion of science has taken place since the time experimental science began, i.e. science which describes what is, and therefore not science, because one way or another we all know what is, and nobody needs a description of it. People drink wine and smoke tobacco, and science sets itself the task of justifying the use of wine and tobacco physiologically. People kill each other, and science sets itself the task of justifying it historically. People deceive each other, and for the sake of a small number, deprive all other people of land or the implements of labour, and science justifies it economically. People believe in nonsense, and teleological science justifies it.

The task of science ought to be the knowledge of what should be, and not what is. But present-day science, on the contrary, sets itself the main task of diverting people’s attention from what should be, and directing it to what is, and what nobody therefore needs.

Today is 3 May, Yasnaya Polyana    Arrived here with Masha. […] Yesterday Tanya, Vera and Gay arrived. I was uneasy about Tanya. I couldn’t write the whole time. Played patience this morning and thought. Kept thinking about the catechism. It’s far more serious – as always happens – and more important and more difficult than I thought.

(1) The most self-satisfied and untroubled people are those whose passions and demands on life don’t exceed what is tolerated by society: mistresses, brothels, even paederasty, employment, a salary, the acquisition of property, enrichment through marriage, war, duels and so on. […]

Today is 15 May, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve been unwell for a whole week or more. It began, I think, on the day when I was upset by Sonya’s dismal escapade over Chertkov.12 It’s all understandable, but it was very painful; the more so because I’ve become unaccustomed to it, and was glad of my restored – even newly established – good, strong, loving feeling for her. I was afraid it would be destroyed. But no, the thing blew over, and the same feeling has been restored. She’s not here. She’s coming the day after tomorrow. Tanya, Lyova, Masha, Sasha and Vanechka are here. They are all nice and cheerful. The American Crosby has been.13 I don’t know how to define him. Kenworthy’s books are good.14 I wrote him a foolish letter, and wrote many other letters too. An excellent article by Adler about the four sufferings which are all edifying and can be welcomed as a blessing: need, sickness, grief and sin.15

I’ve written nothing. I’m weak. The Catechism hasn’t progressed much, but I think it will turn out all right. Began to revise Lao-Tzu.16 Had some poetic thoughts today about a work of fiction. During this time I made only one note:

(1) Material good is only acquired at the expense of other people. Spiritual good – always through the good of other people.

Today is 2 June, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve just received a telegram about the death of Gay. I can hardly write the words: the death of Gay. But how blind we are, and only see what seems to us to be the case. And so it seems to us that he was needed, with his projects and plans. But no. I love him very, very much – I don’t want to say loved – but still it seemed to me that while he was far from finishing his work in an artistic sense, he was far from finishing it also in the sense of Christian development and progress. It’s terrible to write this. But that’s how it seemed to me. I’m terribly sorry for him. He was a delightful, brilliant old child.

Still writing the Catechism; still weak. Chertkov came. We got on well. Thought little during this time. One thing: (1) Women are people with sexual organs over their hearts.

14 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Wrote an exposition of Henry George’s project.17 Haven’t been writing the Catechism, I can’t get on with it. Chertkov was very excited yesterday. Sonya drove to his house today. He wasn’t at home. He was with Bulygin.18 In the morning I went mushrooming and bathed. Decided to stop my writing. Read through all the works of fiction which I’ve begun. They’re all bad. If I’m going to write, I’ll have to start everything again, more truthfully, without invention. After dinner I walked round to Marya Alexandrovna’s.19 Met a dwarf, a forty-year-old woman; she had been a washerwoman, had caught a cold and was going about without proper clothes or shoes, poverty-stricken, hungry and with no money. At Marya Alexandrovna’s I talked about Beketov, who said that it’s impossible to live the sort of life where you work all day for yourself (doing your own washing). So who will do the washing? That washerwoman. An incomprehensible letter from Kolechka. Ten years of his life were a mistake. Ten years of life without being reproached for sinning, for helping to produce these washerwomen, for living off other people – a mistake! Astonishing. Thought apropos of this:

(1) We’re now experiencing the inevitable moment in any sobering up process. The foam has to settle, the dust to scatter, the exuberance to abate, so that real, solid, irresistible growth can commence. There will be, and there already are cases of cooling off, defection, renunciation, and even betrayal. So much the better. Everything is being burnt that can burn.

(2) Looked at the wonderful sunset as I walked towards Ovsyannikovo. A gap in the heaped up clouds, and through it, like an unevenly shaped piece of coal, the sun. And all that above the woods and the rye. I felt joyful. And I thought: No, this world is not a joke, not just a vale of trial and tribulation and a transition to a better, everlasting world, but is itself an everlasting world which is beautiful and joyful, and which we not only can, but must make more beautiful and joyful for those living with us, and those who will live in it after us.

Today is 25 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Haven’t written my diary for eleven days. During this time the only new and surprising thing was the news of the searches at Popov’s and at Posha’s in Kostroma.20 I’m afraid that we rejoice too much at the start of what seem to be persecutions, and to wish for them. Both men behaved very simply and resolutely. But they were glad. I’m afraid for them. I hope they won’t feel suffering when they are locked up and tortured. I’m ashamed and hurt to be at liberty myself. I’m trying not to wish for anything and not to seek anything. […] Coldness with Lyova, which pains me. He’s constantly preoccupied with his illness, looking into himself and therefore seeing nothing and not living.

I’ve been depressed during this time by the dissipation of the young boys, Andryusha and Misha, especially Andryusha. Misha is still unharmed for his years, but with spoiling and the lack of moral authority the same thing will happen to him. About a week ago he (Andryusha) was out dancing till one o’clock; I said to him that he would be another Bibikov, and that it would be better for him to leave home and live in the village; yesterday, when there wasn’t any dancing, it was just the same: he went off to the village and wasn’t home before one. I was very worried about him, but overcame my personal annoyance, and when he came back I went out and told him that he mustn’t think we were asleep, but should know we were waiting for him and were worried. I wanted to speak gently to him. Our children’s situation is very bad; there isn’t any moral authority. Sonya deliberately destroys mine, and in its place puts her own comic demands for propriety, which it’s easy for them to meet. I’m sorry both for them and for her. It’s her I’ve been particularly sorry for recently. She sees that everything she was doing was wrong and had led to no good. But to confess that she was wrong not to have followed me is almost impossible for her. The remorse would be too terrible.

I’m continuing to think about the exposition of my teaching, and it seems quite clear to me, but I still can’t get on with the writing. Thought during this time: […]

(2) They say: ‘Art is natural, a bird sings. That’s why it’s a bird. But a man is a man – he has higher demands.’ Yes, as long as he sings like a bird that’s very good, but if he assembles hundreds of musicians who have been deformed in his conservatoires and who wear white ties and play an incomprehensible symphony, he can’t any longer use the excuse that he’s a bird: he’s wasting his intelligence which was given him for higher purposes on imitating – and unsuccessfully imitating – a bird.

(3) It’s pleasant to eat, sleep and even defecate in a clean place, that’s to say it’s pleasant to dirty something. It’s the same morally. For that reason chastity of body and soul is pleasant – in order to have the pleasure of polluting it. […]

26 June, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday I spoke to Andryusha and told him everything he had done wrong. I didn’t speak angrily, but not lovingly either, not as I should have done. He remained silent. A perfect example of the fact that only one thing is needful: the only thing needful is to summon up love for him in myself, and in the degree to which I achieve this, I have a good influence on him too. […]

Walked to the sand pits. The peasants there were climbing into the pits and risking their lives as they worked. I said at dinner that we must have a proper sand pit made. Sonya said at first that she wouldn’t give the money. There was a moment’s anger. You want to offer the other cheek when somebody hits you on one, but when a real opportunity occurs, as now, you don’t want to offer it, but to withdraw it. After dinner I went for a walk with Vyacheslav21 and decided to have a sand pit made. Seryozha arrived. I was depressed, but I think I wasn’t much to blame. Went for a walk with Chertkov, spoke to him about his unkindness to Marya Alexandrovna and Ozmidov. Then went to the workers. Thank God I haven’t forgotten ‘the one thing that is needful’. A talk with Lyova in the evening. He reproached me for not believing much in his illness. Could have been gentler and kinder with him.

Today is 27 June, Yasnaya Polyana    Got up in the morning with bad thoughts, wrote nothing. Read Schopenhauer.22 Karma for him exists only in the sense of the preparation in a former life of a person’s character for this life, and not in the sense of a struggle in this life between light and darkness. He denies this and is inconsistent.

A talk with Vladimir Fyodorovich about criticism.23 Recalled Kolechka’s famous saying that criticism is when the foolish talk about the clever. […]

6 July, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve been working these last days haymaking. I’m well. Only I had a pain in the liver yesterday from the heat. Pyotr Gay came. Talked to me about his father and brother. And there was a letter from Kolechka. I don’t understand it. Want to write to him at once. A letter from Velikanov. I find his singing of my praises unpleasant. Lyova arouses painful feelings in me. Seignorial life has taken a complete hold of him. Ozmidov came yesterday. He is to be pitied for the mess his life is in. I wrote a letter to Kenworthy. Added to it yesterday. Miss Welsh is translating it.24 Toulon has come out in English.25.

Thought: […]

(2) 3 July. Before dinner. A bright, warm day. Near the house, in the shadow of the fence, flies are buzzing continually above the manure, and out there in the steppe the burning hot air shimmers and sparkles in the sun.

(3) Recalled my own depravity and corruption. I was corrupted by my early dissipation, by luxury, gluttony and idleness. Had it not been for that, I would now, at the age of sixty-five, be young and fresh. But surely this corruption hasn’t been in vain. All my moral demands have grown out of this corruption. […]

8 July    […] In the evening an American Jew came.26 It’s difficult to love a Jew. I must try hard. 7. I worked, carted hay, and felt terribly depressed. At 3 Turner came.27 Talked to him about the translation and the foreword. Revised the letter to Kenworthy and sent it off. […]

Thought a lot these days, but made no notes and kept forgetting. I remember the following: […]

(2) Apropos of the loathsome book by Prévost,28 who also discusses morality in a foreword, I thought (something that’s long been known): that the artist teaches not what he wants, but what he can. What he has overcome in himself, what has become an überwundener Standpunkt [point of view over which he has prevailed], that he can denounce; what he not only considers good, but passionately loves himself – that alone can he make other people love. But not just what he fancies. This is proved best of all by the fact that the artist works not by argument, but by mimicry, by stimulating the desire to imitate.

(3) Art has two aims: the one is animal play – to dance like a calf, to sing like a bird, to entertain by fairy stories, as the story-teller used to do; and the other is human – to progress forward and thereby further the progress of people towards the establishment of the Kingdom of God. And so there are two points of view about art which are usually confused: the animal and the human; and from the animal point of view it is only possible to judge animal art, but from the human point of view it is possible to judge both. And from the human point of view, animal art is only good when it furthers the requirements of man. When it doesn’t do so, but doesn’t contradict them either, it is neutral, but when it runs counter to them it is bad.

From this confusion arise all the misunderstandings about art; man judges from an animal point of view human art, or art running counter to human aims, and so on, in various permutations. […]

13 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Missed yesterday. Read the day before yesterday. Marya Alexandrovna and Lyustig came;29 went to Chertkov’s in the evening. He talked heatedly with Strakhov. He passed on to me some extracts from my diary30 – very good. I find it unpleasant that he praises me so. […]

15 July    In the evening I dictated to Masha my drama – Peter the Publican.31 […]

19 July, Yasnaya Polyana    Yesterday, the 18th. Did no writing. Still the same weakness. Even worse today. And my back hurts. Yesterday morning some petitioners – then a lady, Przewalska32 – a completely useless creature. She doesn’t need me, and I don’t need her. Wrote a little this morning. The Dieterichs are tedious. I keep remembering that I live in the sight of God, but my life is very feeble. A mere trickle. If only it were pure. Made no notes. It’s now nearly 12. I’ve missed out a day. Went with Kasatkin to Gill’s works in the morning.33 Not much of interest. Very tired. In the evening I went to Chertkov’s. Yesterday went for a bathe. Very weak. Strakhov has read all the things I’ve begun, and encourages me to continue. Went with Sonya to Chertkov’s. On the way I talked a bit about the meaning of life. She and I are talking a bit better. In the evening Andryusha disappeared again to the village. A difficult conversation with Sonya. He, Andryusha, had been telling her that the peasants in the hayfield had told him that Timofey was my son.34 I’m sorry for the children. They have no authority under whose shelter they can grow up and be strong. Wrote quite a lot yesterday. But badly.

9 August    I would never have thought that I haven’t written my diary for four weeks. Today is 9 August, Yasnaya Polyana. It’s gone 9 in the evening. Nothing has happened during this time. No, something has. Lyova went to Moscow with Tanya. I’m very sorry for him – sorry for his spiritual weakness. The day before yesterday Masha went too, to relieve Tanya. Yevgeny Ivanovich35 has been here. I enjoyed seeing him, but there’s no true intimacy. All the time I’ve been seeing Chertkov often. He’s physically ill, but spiritually resolute. A mountain of letters which I still haven’t reduced in size. All this time, except for the occasional day like today, I’ve been writing my Catechism. It all seems to be getting clear, but it still doesn’t have the form to satisfy me.

During this time MacGahan and her son visited me and brought some books from Henry George.36 Read A Perplexed Philosopher again. Excellent. Became very vividly aware again of the sin of owning land. It’s astonishing that people don’t see it. How necessary to write about this – to write a new Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Yesterday I received an article from Sergeyev and an article from Gegen den Strom.37 How much truth is spoken on all sides, and how little of it is heard by people. Something else is needed, something different.

Thought during this time: (1) something unimportant: for harmony between a husband and wife, it’s necessary, if their views of the world and life don’t coincide, for the one who has thought less about it to give way to the one who has thought more. How happy I would be to give way to Sonya, but it’s just as impossible as it is for a goose to go back into its egg. She ought to give way, but she doesn’t want to – she has no understanding, no humility and no love. […]

Today is 18 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Thought about science: we say: whatever science investigates – the spectrum, the Milky Way, the Martian years,38 bacilli, etc. – is bound to be useful. But we should say: only the sort of knowledge which is of use to men can we call science.

About anarchists: by means of tremendous all-round labour of thought and word, understanding is spread among people, is assimilated by them in the most diverse forms, and begins to take a grip on them in the most strange ways; with some people because of fashion, with others because of bragging, under the guise of liberalism, science, philosophy or religion; and it becomes natural to them. People believe that they are brothers, that one shouldn’t oppress brothers, that one should help progress and education, and fight against superstitions; this becomes public opinion, and suddenly … terror, the French Revolution, the 1st of March, the assassination of Carnot39 – and all the labours are in vain. It’s as if the water collected drop by drop by a dam were to run away at the single blow of a spade, and wash uselessly over fields and meadows. How is it that the anarchists can’t see the harm done by violence? How I would like to write to them about this.40 All that they are arguing about and doing in spreading ideas about the uselessness and harm of state violence is right and correct. There is only one change they need to make: for violence and murder – non-participation in acts of violence and murder. […]

Today is 27 August, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday Tanya went to Ovsyannikovo to make an agreement with the peasants.41 This hurt me. I said nothing. She is sad. I asked why; she said Ovsyannikovo, and began to cry. She said: it’s playing a dirty trick which is no use to anyone. What joy. A birthday present.

28 August, Yasnaya Polyana    I’m now sixty-six. And this is the date which used to seem so remote to me; and work on the Catechism is far from finished, and nothing new has been begun. […]

Talked with Tanya. She just wants to get rid of her property. I’ll try to arrange it for her in the best possible way. Read Labour Prophet in the evening.42 […]

Today is 30 August, Yasnaya Polyana    Made no notes yesterday. In the morning I reprimanded the boys for their dissoluteness. Wrote little, or hardly anything. I’m still turning round on the same spot. Felled timber with a peasant from Kolpna. In the evening I went to Ovsyannikovo, but didn’t talk to the peasants. They were drunk. Thought this morning: […]

Novels end with the hero and heroine getting married. They should begin with that and end with them getting unmarried, i.e. becoming free. Otherwise to describe people’s lives in such a way as to break off the description with marriage is just the same as describing a person’s journey and breaking off the description at the point where the traveller falls into the hands of robbers.

Today is 6 September, Yasnaya Polyana    It’s now gone 4 in the afternoon. In the morning I worked on the Catechism. I’m afraid to say that I’m making progress because it’s so imperceptible, but still I’m not dissatisfied, and every day there is something new and it’s all becoming clearer. In the morning I thought up in bed after a bad night a very vivid story about a master and his man.43 After breakfast I sawed up some oak trees with Andriyan.

Yesterday, the 5th, I went to Ovsyannikovo in the evening and concluded things very satisfactorily with the peasants. They will pay 425 roubles each for communal necessities. I explained to them the whole meaning of the business.44 […]

Missed out some days. Today is 10 September, Yasnaya Polyana. Yesterday I wrote quite well. Then went to Tula to the notary and to Rudakov’s.45 The notary wanted to make Tanya’s act public. That’s bad. Met Yevdokimov.46 He’s living with a prostitute. I tried to suggest to him that it’s a task for him, and a great task, to restore her to life. Rudakov has arrived at a state of pessimism in theory, and family life in practice. […] Yesterday morning when I woke up I thought about a reply to the Englishman about anarchism, how to manage without a government.47

Read Guyard’s excellent book.48 He says: the aim of life is the good, the means towards self-improvement, and the instrument is love. Thought: To the question how to manage without a state, without law courts, an army, etc., no answer can be given because it is badly put. The question is not what form the state should have – the present one or a new one. Neither I nor any of us is in a postition to solve that question. But I am competent to solve – and it isn’t a matter of choice but of inevitability – the question how I should act in the dilemma with which I am constantly faced: whether to subordinate my conscience to the things that are going on around me, to declare my solidarity with a government which hangs people who have gone astray, drives soldiers to murder, corrupts the people with opium and vodka, etc., or subordinate my actions to my conscience, i.e. not take part in a government whose actions are contrary to my feelings. What will come of this, what state there will be, I don’t know at all, and neither want to nor can know. I only know that nothing bad can come from following my innate superior qualities of reason and love, or reasonable love; just as nothing bad can come from a bee following its innate superior instinct and flying out from its hive with the swarm, apparently to its destruction. But I repeat, I won’t and can’t judge about this. […]

24 September, Yasnaya Polyana    Work went well this morning too. Tanya copied everything out for me. A strange thing; as soon as I think about Ovsyannikovo and of how Tanya gave it to the peasants, I have an unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling. Between 1 and 2 I walked to Kozlovka with a spade and repaired the road. Very tired. Came home and we waited for Sonya, but she didn’t come, she’ll be here tomorrow. I look forward to her coming with particular impatience. If only I could retain when she is here the same good feelings I have for her when she isn’t here.

Thought a lot about what I wrote to Tsetsiliya Vladimirovna.49 Talked about it with Marya Alexandrovna. This is where the true emancipation of women lies – in not considering any work to be women’s work, the sort which one is ashamed to touch, in helping them with all one’s strength just because they are physically weaker, and in taking from them all the work which it is possible to take upon oneself. Similarly with education too – just because they will probably bear children and so have less leisure, for that very reason we should organise schools for them which are not worse, but better than men’s, so that they can build up their strength and knowledge in advance. And they are capable of doing so. I thought about my churlish and egotistical attitude to my wife in this respect. I acted like everybody else, i.e. badly and cruelly. I gave her all the hard work, the so-called women’s work, to do, and went out hunting myself. I was glad to acknowledge my guilt.

Thought again: I saw Vaksa the dog, deformed, with one leg missing, and I wanted to chase him away, but then I felt ashamed. He’s sick, ugly, deformed – that’s why people want to chase him out. But beauty attracts, ugliness repels. What does this mean? Does it mean that one should seek beauty and shun ugliness? No. It means that one should seek that which has beauty as its consequence, and shun that which has ugliness as its consequence: seek the good, seek to help and serve all creatures and human beings, and shun that which does harm to other creatures and human beings. And the consequence will be beauty. If all people are good, everything will be beautiful. Ugliness is an indication of sin, beauty an indication of sinlessness – nature, children. For this reason it is false to make beauty the aim of art.

Masha left in a bad mood. Surely she isn’t jealous of Tanya, and the Ovsyannikovo business – God forbid. I must write to her.

Today is 4 October, Yasnaya Polyana    I’m going backwards. It’s now getting on for 12 o’clock at night. Sat upstairs with my son Seryozha and – what joy – I didn’t have the slightest unkind feeling for him as before, but, on the contrary, a glimmer of love. Love – I thank Thee, father of love. Today is Tanya’s birthday. She’s thirty. She’s sad, quiet and, I think, restless at heart. God help her. Slept in the afternoon, wrote in the morning. Bandaged up my leg. Yesterday evening I sat with Legras. Also wrote in the afternoon as well as in the morning. My leg hurt. The day before yesterday, the 3rd, I came back from Pirogovo with a sore leg. Found Sonya in a very lively and good mood. Everything is getting better and better. […]

Today is 8 October, Yasnaya Polyana    Posha and Strakhov50 came today. There had been a search at Strakhov’s and they had explained to him that Tolstoy was a different person now and dangerous. I didn’t want to be persecuted, they alleged. And I felt ashamed of myself because of it. Things had been very well at home with Sonya. But the whole day today, the evening as well, she tried once more to make me glad to be persecuted. The whole day: first stolen apple trees and prison for the woman, then condemnation of what is dear to me, then joy that Novosyolov has been converted to Orthodoxy, then talk about money for The Fruits of Enlightenment.51 I felt weaker, and my little flame of love which had lit up my life so joyfully began to grow dim. I mustn’t forget that life is not to do with the works of this world, but only with this light. And I think I’ve remembered. […]

9 October    The illness and probably early death of the Tsar moves me very much. I’m very sorry. In the morning Rudakov came. I began to work, but ran up against temptations. The subdivisions and the definition itself are arbitrary, and there is a lack of precision. Thought it over, but came to no decision. Went to Demenka, took an old man a bandage. Plunged right into the poverty of the village. How bad that I’ve avoided it for so long. You grudge the time, you want to say everything you have to say, and you haven’t the strength. And if you are too closely involved with the village, you lack the equable temperament which, I think, is needed for work. I say ‘which I think is needed’, because I’m not sure that it should be. Even if work in the village and intercourse with the people were to go smoothly and naturally and without conflict, still, apart from the purely artificial nature of the relations, there is also the conflict in the family – and that’s difficult and beyond my strength.

Strakhov is very pleasant; he’s left for Moscow. Sonya is in a bad mood, constantly nagging.

Today is 13 October, Yasnaya Polyana    […] Yesterday morning Masha and Vera Severtseva arrived. Masha is well and at peace. Lyova arouses pity, he and the Tsar. Chopped wood with Posha. In the evening I finished reading ‘Goethe’s friendship with Schiller’.52 Thought a lot while reading both about aesthetics and about my own drama. I feel like writing. Perhaps it’s God’s will too. […]

Thought during this time:

(1) People are now obsessed with the theory of art – one person proposing beauty as its ideal, another usefulness, a third play. The whole confusion arises from the fact that people want to continue to consider as an ideal something that has outlived its time and ceased to be one. Such is the case with usefulness and beauty. Art is the ability to depict what ought to be, what all people ought to strive towards, what gives people the greatest good. This can only be depicted by images. Mankind has already outlived two such ideals and is now living for the third. First of all it was usefulness: everything useful was a work of art, or so it was considered; then the beautiful; and now the good, the moral. The confusion arises from the fact that people want to set up what is outlived as an ideal again, as though wanting to make adults play with dolls or hobby-horses. This needs to be said clearly and concisely. […]

21 October    Haven’t written my diary for more than a week. Today is 21 October, Yasnaya Polyana. Sonya has left, Tanya has arrived. Her condition is better. During this time the same work as usual, and it’s progressing just as slowly, if not more so. Decided again today to write in a popular language, comprehensible to all. My health isn’t altogether good. No energy. But my mental state is excellent.

Some three days ago I read through my diary for 1884, and was disgusted with myself for my unkindness and the cruelty of my opinions about Sonya and Seryozha. Let them know that I take back all the unkind things I wrote about them. Sonya I value and love more and more. Seryozha I understand, and have no other feeling for him except love. […]

Thought: (1) I recalled my young years and my relations with women. If a person wants to deprive himself of any possibility of free mental activity and free relations with people, he ought to do what I used to do: eat meat, drink coffee, tea, and wine, not work, but do gymnastics and read books which arouse passions. All my youth I was like an overfed, wild foal, it’s strange to recall it. […]

Today is the 26th. Haven’t written my diary for three days. One thing that happened during this time was that I wrote to Popov, asking him to stop corresponding with Tanya. She gave in. She is very good. […]

I’m reading Morticoles,53 and I think there’s a drop of my honey there too. A very useful and important book. Today Pavel the cobbler54 died. He kept asking his wife: ‘Haven’t they come for me?’ and kept listening at the windows. During the night he cried: ‘They’re coming. Now.’ And died. Only old men like me notice this brief, transitory nature of life. It’s so clear, when people disappear one after another round about you. You’re only surprised that you yourself still cling on. And is it worth it (if from no other point of view) when one is here for such a short interval of time, to tell lies, spread confusion and do foolish things in that short interval? It’s like an actor who has only one short scene, who has prepared for that scene for a long time and is dressed and made up, and then suddenly goes on to the stage, forgets his lines, disgraces himself and ruins the whole play. […]

Today is 30 October, Yasnaya Polyana    I’ve felt very weak mentally these last days. […]

Thought: (1) About the oath which I talked about yesterday with Pyotr Tsyganok.55 Twelve-year-olds are ordered to take the oath. Do they really think they can bind children by it? Surely it’s obvious that the very demand shows their guilt and awareness of it. They want to support and save autocracy which is drowning, and they send Orthodoxy to its rescue, but autocracy will push Orthodoxy under, and will drown all the quicker itself. […]

Today is 4 November, Yasnaya Polyana    We didn’t go to Pirogovo. The girls found a letter at Kozlovka from Sonya, in which she was in despair. But yesterday evening I got a letter, from which it was evident that it has all blown over. I didn’t get down to writing either day. I don’t feel like writing and thinking. I feel like working with my hands and riding.

Seryozha came today. I got on well with him. He feels again that I’m going to meet him, and he’s drawing closer. […] There’s nothing more for me to do. Tanya complains that her life – she is thirty – has passed uselessly by, and that she has ruined things for herself. It’s good that she thinks so. Masha is being sent abroad. Tomorrow.

10 November    Haven’t written my diary for five days. Today is 10 November, Moscow. Nothing special in my outer life has happened during this time. We moved to Moscow, Bulygin came to see us, there was the same folly and baseness on the occasion of the death of the old Tsar and the accession of the new. I’m depressed by the multitude of people in Moscow. Internally, it’s good that work seems to be progressing and becoming clearer, but it’s bad that I no longer have that fresh awareness of the presence of God and that loving feeling which I had before. I feel that in my relations with Sonya and Lyova.

I’ve been thinking all this time about my writing, and have entered in my notebook, or will enter, what I thought. Made notes on a sheet of paper and lost it. I only remember that the procession through Moscow with the coffin was an obvious exhibition which tsars are obliged to put on. They put on such exhibitions all their lives: their whole life is taken up with them. And people still envy them.

Had a touching letter from a young man from Petersburg asking ‘why live?’56 I wrote to him yesterday.

Today is 20 November, Moscow    He seems to have heard my prayer, and I feel – felt – especially today during my walk – the joy of life. Wrote quite successfully today. The rest of the time I’ve been revising the biography of Drozhzhin.57 […] During this time I wrote a foreword to the fairy tale Karma, and sent it off.58 Thought a lot during this time. Didn’t make a note of most of it, and have forgotten it, but this is what I remember: […]

(2) I walked past the Kremlin walls and embrasures and thought: there was a time when this was necessary; instruments of torture and execution were also necessary and censorship too, but the time has now come when certain of these objects (for certain people) are already monuments of antiquity. Likewise the time will come when people will put on display cannons, sabres, fortresses, uniforms and military orders. […]

(6) To say that reason can lead us astray, that we oughtn’t to trust it, that it’s pride, is just the same as saying that a workman working in a pit with a lamp might get lost if he is guided by the light of his lamp, that he oughtn’t to trust its light, that it’s pride. But what is he to trust if that is his only light? I know that my reason is limited and weak in comparison with God’s reason, and that I can’t be aware of everything, but still reason is reason and my only guide, and a guide given by God and like Him. If a miner’s lamp is not the sun, still it is a light, and a light like the sun and one that originates from it. […]

Today is 25 December, evening    Haven’t written my diary for more than a month. Among things that have happened during this time was the visit from the students; I wrote letters for them to Petersburg.59 Another sad clash with Lyova. The arrival of the Chertkovs the other day made me glad. I’ve been writing on the doctrine of the good.60 I gave it up recently for ten days or so and got on first with The Dream of a Young Tsar61 and then Master and Man. I think I’ll finish that. I still love my catechism just as much and think about it constantly. […]

(1) Belief in miracles is a sign of the awareness of the unimportance, impermanence, unreality and chance nature of the laws of the material world, the awareness of their dependence on a spiritual origin in which all their force resides, and which is eternal, unchangeable and the only reality. One may wish to, and believe one can fly alive to Heaven, or be resurrrected after death, but it won’t occur to anyone to wish for or believe that 2 + 2 will make 5, or that a bitter sensation will become sweet, or hatred become good. […]

Today is 31 December. Five days have passed. All that time I’ve been writing the story Master and Man. I don’t know whether it’s good. It’s pretty worthless. Chertkov has been. An unpleasant clash arose over a photograph. As always, Sonya acted decisively, but thoughtlessly and badly.62 An excellent book by Lachmann,63 Weder Dogma noch Glaubensbekenntnis, sondern Religion; must write to him. […]

(2) Lyova said that he had a long talk with Vanya Rayevsky about the fact that young people of our time are sickly and suffer nervous illness because there is no field of activity for them, and the two of them said many other very clever things. But it all amounts to the religion of the chamber pot, as grandfather used to say – to not making other people serve you in the very basic, simple things. All Christian morality in its practical application amounts to considering all people as brothers, to being equal with everyone – this awareness was the main turning-point in my life – and in order to put it into practice, it is necessary first of all to stop making other people work for you and, given the organisation of our world, to use as little as possible the work and products of other people and everything that is acquired in exchange for money, to spend as little money as possible and to live as simply as possible. But they – the best of them, who wish to be in agreement with me – evade this requirement, calling it one-sided and exaggerated, and wish to live morally, while violating the first, main rule of morality. It’s understandable that they don’t succeed in this. And they are depressed and come to grief. […]

Notes

1 About the fact that Khilkov’s mother, Princess Khilkova, in the absence of her son who was living in exile, forcibly took his children away from his common-law wife (Letters, II, 499, fn.6). D. A. Khilkov was a former Guards officer and wealthy landowner who gave up his career and most of his estates to work on the land as a peasant and who was exiled for his anti-clerical beliefs. (Letters, II, 457).

2 Tolstoy was recognised while attending a congress of naturalists and doctors in Moscow and made to sit on the platform next to Timiryazev, the president.

3 Y. N. Drozhzhin, a peasant who had been sentenced as a conscientious objector to serve in a disciplinary battalion, and who died in prison.

4 Compare the characters Fedya Protasov and Karenin in the play A Living Corpse.

5 Tolstoy soon changed his mind and sent his article Christianity and Patriotism to be published abroad. Turner translated it into English for the Daily Chronicle.

6 Popov.

7 While at Chertkov’s, Tolstoy had painful talks with Tatyana’s suitor, Popov.

8 An arithmetical metaphor which Tolstoy was fond of using in which the numerator of a fraction denoted a person’s positive qualities, and the denominator his opinion of himself.

9 An exposition of his beliefs, originally in the form of questions and answers, which was eventually called Christian Teaching.

10 See 1893, Note 13.

11 An article by a professor of hygiene (subsequently an Octobrist member of the second and third Dumas) which was directed against Tolstoy’s article The First Step.

12 Sonya objected to a photograph which Chertkov had taken.

13 E. H. Crosby, an American social reformer and ‘Tolstoyan’, who wrote extensively on Tolstoy. Tolstoy in turn wrote a preface to Crosby’s book Shakespeare’s Attitude to the Working Class (Letters, II, 511).

14 From Bondage to Brotherhood and The Christian Revolt. J. C. Kenworthy, an English lay preacher and ardent ‘Tolstoyan’, greatly impressed Tolstoy by his book The Anatomy of Misery, and went to Russia in order to meet him. He was closely associated with the Croydon Brotherhood Church and wrote extensively but not always reliably about Tolstoy’s ideas (Letters, II, 533).

15 An article by the American writer and proponent of ethical culture, Felix Adler, entitled Les quatre formes de la souffrance, published in Paris in Pierre Hoffmann’s book La religion basée sur la morale.

16 See 1893, Note 25.

17 A short account of George’s ‘single tax’ theory, written for the benefit of the peasant and religious sectarian T. M. Bondarev (Letters, II, 518).

18 Bulygin was serving a short sentence of detention for civil disobedience.

19 M. A. Schmidt.

20 Letters and papers to do with Drozhzhin were confiscated from Popov at The Intermediary publishing house and from Biryukov at his farm in the Kostroma province.

21 V. A. Behrs.

22 A section of Parerga und Paralipomena concerning reincarnation in Eastern religions.

23 V. F. Lazursky, a literary historian and university professor, invited by Tolstoy’s wife in the summer of 1894 to teach Latin and Greek to Andrey and Mikhail. During his stay at Yasnaya Polyana Lazursky kept a diary of his conversations with Tolstoy (published in 1939), mainly on literature and art.

24 Hannah Welsh – an Englishwoman who taught English and music to Tolstoy’s children from 1894 to 1900.

25 In the Daily Chronicle (see Note 5).

26 Joseph Krauskopf, an American rabbi from Philadelphia, who was visiting Russia to explore the possibility of colonising Jews there, and brought Tolstoy a booklet of his entitled Homilies. Six Lectures.

27 C. E. Turner, who had translated Toulon into English, came to see Tolstoy about an English edition of his Translation and Harmony of the Gospels. Turner held a tenured post as Lector in English at Petersburg University and was the author, inter alia, of Studies in Russian Literature, 1882 and Count Tolstoi as Novelist and Thinker, 1888.

28 Les Demi-vierges (1894). N. D. Fomina, who was translating it into Russian, had written to ask Tolstoy to write a foreword.

29 M. A. Schmidt and her friend Vera Lyustig who was staying with her during the summer.

30 Intended for the collection of Tolstoy’s thoughts which Chertkov was compiling.

31 A play written to be acted by Tolstoy’s younger sons and some peasant children, but never completed.

32 A Polish lady, two of whose letters to Tolstoy have survived.

33 Coal mines and cement and brick works, some five miles from Yasnaya Polyana.

34 Timofey Bazykin, Tolstoy’s illegitimate son by a peasant woman, who later worked as a coachman on Audrey’s estate.

35 Popov.

36 Varvara Nikolayevna MacGahan, the Russian-born widow of an American journalist, who was visiting Russia as a newspaper correspondent and brought Tolstoy a signed copy of George’s book A Perplexed Philosopher, which dealt with Herbert Spencer’s views on land ownership.

37 Nothing is known about Sergeyev; Gegen den Strom was the title of a series of brochures on art and culture published in Vienna between 1886 and 1894.

38 The time taken for the planet Mars to revolve round the sun.

39 The president of the French Republic had been assassinated by an Italian anarchist, Caserio, in June 1894.

40 He did so to some extent in The Slavery of Our Times and Thou Shalt Not Kill.

41 On Tolstoy’s advice, Tatyana made a ‘Henry George style’ agreement with the peasants on the land she owned near Ovsyannikovo. Under the agreement the land was leased to the peasants who undertook, instead of payment of rent, to contribute a fixed annual sum for communal necessities.

42 The journal published in Manchester by John Trevor (Labour Prophet. The Organ of the Labour Church).

43 The first mention of Master and Man.

44 See Note 41. According to Tatyana, this episode was the germ of the discussions between Nekhlyudov and the peasants about land reform on Henry George lines in Resurrection.

45 To the notary to register the Ovsyannikovo agreement, and to Rudakov, a metal worker from Tula, to reply to his request for advice on how to bring up his children.

46 A former student from Kiev University whom Tolstoy had helped to find employment in Tula.

47 Tolstoy did not reply directly to the Englishman, Charles Foyster, but wrote an answer in the form of an article on the attitude to the state which was dated 15 December 1894 and sent to the Daily Chronicle.

48 Des droits, des devoirs et des institutions au point de vue de la destinée humaine, 1848, by the French Utopian sociologist, Auguste Guyard.

49 Khilkov’s common-law wife, who had written to Tolstoy about the unjust division of labour in the family between men and women.

50 F. A. Strakhov, who was to edit a proposed manuscript journal, L. N Tolstoy’s Archives.

51 Although Tolstoy had renounced the copyright of his works he had agreed to accept a small payment for performances of The Fruits of Enlightenment (and later The Power of Darkness) which he used for charitable purposes and referred to jokingly as his ‘pension’.

52 An article in the Herald of Europe by V. D. Spasovich. The thoughts it prompted about his ‘drama’ refer to The Light Shineth in Darkness.

53 By Léon Daudet, Alphonse Daudet’s son; a satirical novel directed against the medical profession.

54 P. P. Arbuzov.

55 The oath to the new Tsar, which Tolstoy discussed with a local carpenter.

56 Captain Walrond, commander of the cruiser Chesma.

57 Written by Popov.

58 A Buddhist tale written by the American author Paul Carus for his journal The Open Court, translated by Tolstoy and published with his foreword in the Northern Herald.

59 A student delegation from Moscow University visited Tolstoy to protest against the expulsion and administrative exile of fifty-three students for a demonstration at a lecture by Professor Klyuchevsky, thought to be unduly favourable to the late Tsar. Tolstoy wrote on their behalf to his lawyer friend A. F. Koni, and may have written other letters which have not survived.

60 The Christian Teaching.

61 An unfinished story on the subject of the accession to the throne of Nicholas II.

62 She destroyed the negatives of several photographs in which Tolstoy had been taken together with Chertkov, Biryukov and other ‘Tolstoyans’.

63 A Danish writer with similar views to Tolstoy’s.

About the Editor

Professor R. F. Christian is one of the major scholars of Russian literature of the last one hundred years. Most especially he is associated with Tolstoy being accorded the highest praise from authors and critics like A. N. Wilson, Jay Parini and George Steiner. Among his publications are Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction, Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’: A Study and his definitive editions of Tolstoy’s Letters and Diaries (both in two volumes). The Letters and Diaries as well as his ‘War and Peace’ book have been reissued in Faber Finds.

Professor Christian was born in Liverpool, graduated from Oxford University with a first-class honours degree in Russian, joined the Foreign Office and was Attache at the British Embassy in Moscow. His academic career began at the University of Liverpool. At the University of Birmingham he became Chair of Russian Language and Literature. He moved to the University of St. Andrews from where he retired as Head of the Russian Department.

Copyright

This ebook edition first published in 2015
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Selection, English translation and editorial matter © R. F. Christian, 1985
Preface © Rosamund Bartlett, 2010

The right of R. F. Christian to be identified as editor and translator of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

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ISBN 978–0–571–32404–0