Tolstoy

The trouble was, Tolstoy’s involvement with the peasantry was also a creative and linguistic one. Fighting in the Crimean War had revealed to him how great was the abyss between the educated classes and the peasantry. Reluctant to continue writing solely for the nobility, he had resolved to try to bridge that abyss, not only by writing fiction in which the protagonists were peasants, but in an unvarnished language and style that was close to peasant speech. His first experiments in this vein had produced several unfinished stories which he returned to in the first few months after he married, and Sonya helped with the completion of one of them by writing out a fair copy to send to the publisher. Thus began what was to be an extraordinarily fruitful partnership, in which Sonya acted as amanuensis to her husband, performing an invaluable service by deciphering the often barely legible handwriting of the amendments which were invariably crammed into the margins of his tortuously composed drafts. ‘Polikushka’, a parable about the evils of serfdom, was the first story Sonya copied out,³⁵ and it was published in early 1863.³⁶ Another of Tolstoy’s stories of peasant life was entitled ‘Tikhon and Malanya’, but at some point in December 1862 he abruptly stopped working on it, most likely for the simple reason that the central female character Malanya was modelled on Aksinya. He never returned to it, and it was published for the first time only after his death.³⁷

Marriage diverted Tolstoy from the path taking him closer to the peasantry that he had started out on. He now embarked on the lengthy but productive detour which just happened to result in him writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy’s changes of direction may no longer have been as frequent as when he was in his twenties, but they were no less violent when they took place. For two and a half years he had turned his back on art while he had thrown himself into his revolutionary educational activities and worked as a Justice of the Peace. Now he was preparing to turn his back on working for the peasantry and leave this life behind to return to the cultural milieu of his class. But before he could proceed, he needed to fulfil his obligation to his publisher Mikhail katkov, who had lent him 1,000 roubles back in February 1862 to pay a gambling debt. This was the last time Tolstoy gambled. under the terms of the deal, katkov was to have the right to publish Tolstoy’s ‘Caucasus novella’ in his journal the Russian Messenger. It was nowhere near finished, however. Tolstoy tried vainly to persuade katkov to allow him to send money now rather than a manuscript, but eventually he knuckled down and pulled his various drafts into shape.

Tolstoy had been working on this novella for ten years – longer than for any work he ever published – and it had undergone many changes as he read and absorbed works such as The Iliad.³⁸ What was ultimately published in the January 1863 issue of the Russian Messenger was a novella entitled The Cossacks,³⁹ but because Tolstoy had submitted his manuscript so late, the issue in fact only physically appeared at the end of February. He had planned to write a sequel, and he continued to toy with this idea, but really his mind was on other things. The Cossacks is a kind of Rousseau-inspired metaphor of Tolstoy’s spiritual journey in the decade before his marriage. It tells the story of Olenin, a young Russian officer from Moscow, who is stationed with some Cossack villagers during his period of service in the Caucasus. He envies them their freedom, perceiving in them a natural grace and nobility, and he falls hopelessly in love with a particularly alluring Cossack girl. ultimately, however, Olenin realises he cannot overcome his aristocratic, metropolitan background and become one with nature like the Cossacks, and he realises he has to go back to his old life. Something similar happened to Tolstoy when he married, and he openly acknowledged that his views on life had changed when writing to his closest confidante, Alexandrine.⁴⁰ He was now ready to go back to writing fiction for an educated audience about members of his own class.