“When I fade sadly, then my husband is calm, happy and even cheerful”
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On September 3, 1844, Sofya Tolstaya was born – the future wife of Leo Tolstoy, who survived with him many of his spiritual crises, periods of hard work, triumphs and failures. We re-read her diaries and memoirs to understand what it was like.
one
Tanya, my daughter, once said: “How tired I am of being the daughter of a famous father!” And how then I was tired of being the wife of a famous husband!
2
Life has given us so much. And health, and love, and children, and contentment, and the wonderful mental life of Lev Nikolaevich – for some reason he made nothing but suffering out of everything.
3
I read his plans for family life. Poor man, he was still too young and did not understand that if you first compose a happiness, then later you will miss that you did not understand and expect him so. And sweet, great dreams.
four
He kept expecting from me, my poor, dear husband, that spiritual unity, which was almost impossible in my material life and worries, from which it was impossible and nowhere to go. I would not have been able to share his spiritual life in words, but to put it into practice, to break it, dragging a whole large family behind me, was unthinkable, and beyond my strength.
5
I am writing to my sister Tanya: “I don’t straighten up – I sew, I need to dress six children for the summer.” And in another letter I write: “I sew, I sew, until faintness, until despair, spasms in the throat, my head hurts, melancholy, but I keep sewing, sewing. Sometimes I want to push the walls and break free.
6
No one will understand and, perhaps, will not believe that when I am alive, that is, I am fond of music, books, painting, or people worth it, then my husband is unhappy, anxious and angry. When, as at that time, I sew blouses for him, rewrite, do all sorts of practical things and quietly, sadly wither away, then my husband is calm, happy and even cheerful. And here is my heartbreak!
7
If I could live like Lev Nikolaevich, I would go crazy. In the morning he writes, which means he is mentally exhausted, and in the evening, without ceasing, he talks, or rather, preaches, since the listeners of his speeches come mostly to consult or learn. This afternoon there were thirteen people.
eight
Lev Nikolaevich always and everywhere speaks and writes about love, about serving God and people. I read and listen to this always with bewilderment. From morning until late at night, Lev Nikolayevich’s whole life passes without any personal relationship and participation to people. Gets up, drinks coffee, walks or bathes in the morning, without seeing anyone, sits down to write; riding a bike or swimming again, or just like that; dines or goes downstairs to read, or to tennis. He spends the evening in his room, after dinner he will only sit with us for a while, reading newspapers or looking at various illustrations. And day after day this correct, selfish life goes on without love, without participation in the family, in the interests, joys, sorrows of people close to him.
9
Jealousy makes me a terrible egoist. If I could kill him, and then create a new one, exactly the same, I would do that with pleasure.
ten
Sometimes I found it funny to read in “War and Peace” a description of some ordinary facts from our lives. For example, once I took Lev Nikolayevich’s hand and began jokingly kissing quickly the bones above the hand and saying: January, February, March, April, etc. – Lev Nikolayevich described this, forcing his Natasha to do this with her mother.
eleven
Lev Nikolaevich got up and wanted to set up the samovar for poultices himself; but found the stove still warm enough to warm the napkins in the oven. I always find it funny when he takes up some practical work, how he does it primitively, naively and awkwardly. Yesterday he soiled all the napkins with soot, burned his beard with a candle, and when I started putting it out with my hands, he got angry with me.
12
I have added today in Lyovochka’s diaries to the point where he says: “There is no love, there is a carnal need for communication and a reasonable need for a girlfriend of life.” Yes, if I had read his conviction 29 years ago, I would never have married him!
13
The new ideas of Lev Nikolaevich ruined my life and the life of my children: both sons and daughters. The breakdown of their entire young life greatly affected both their mental and physical lives.
fourteen
I am very lonely. My children are even more despotic and crudely insistent than their father. And my father is so able to convince in paradoxes and false ideas irresistibly that I, having neither his mind nor his prestige, am completely powerless in all my demands.
fifteen
He makes me extremely upset with his mood. In the morning, all day and all night, he attentively, hour after hour, nurses and takes care of his body. I do not see any spiritual mood at all.
16
I’m afraid that when I start writing my diary, I fall into condemnation of Lev Nikolayevich. But I can’t help complaining that everything that is preached for the happiness of people is making life so difficult that it’s getting harder and harder for me to live. Vegetarianism has introduced the complication of double meals, extra expenses and extra labor for people. The sermons of love and kindness have brought indifference to the family and the intrusion of all sorts of rabble into our family life. Renunciation (verbal) of earthly blessings brings condemnation and criticism.
17
I live like an automaton: I walk, I eat, I sleep, I bathe, I copy… I don’t have my own life: I don’t read, I don’t play, I don’t think – and so my whole life.
eighteen
Finished proofreading Anna Karenina. Following step by step the state of her soul, I understood myself, and I became scared … But they don’t take their own life because they don’t take revenge on someone, they take their own life because they no longer have the strength to live … First, struggle, then prayer, then humility, then despair, and finally, impotence and death. And I suddenly clearly imagined Lev Nikolaevich, crying with senile tears and saying that no one saw what was happening in me, and no one helped me … And how can I help?
19
We rode beautifully along Zasek today, all along forest paths, but everything is already melting. L. N. rode with Sasha, I with Lyova, and the doctor with Natasha and Yulia Ivanovna. Then I moved to Lev Nikolaevich. My heart jumped for joy that he was healthy, traveling and ruling: how many times I thought his life was over, and here again he was returned to it!
twenty
In the morning, L. N. wrote “Resurrection” and was very pleased with his work that day. “You know,” he said to me when I came in, “he won’t marry her, and I finished everything today, that is, I decided that it was so good!” I told him: “Of course, he won’t marry. I told you this for a long time; if he married, it would be false.
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