The Last Days of Tolstoy Part 8

_January 12, 1909_ (from a diary).--It grows more and more difficult.

I do not know how to thank G.o.d that, together with the growing difficulty, the strength to endure it grows also. Together with the burden there is also the strength, and there is incomparably more joy from the consciousness of strength than pain from the burden. Yes, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

_May 6, 1907_ (from the letters).--It is hard for you. G.o.d help you to bear your trial without reproaches to others and without infringement of love for them. It is always a great help to me, when anything is difficult, to think and to remember that it is the material--and necessary, good material--upon which I am called to work, and not before men but before G.o.d.

_July 21, 1909_ (from a diary).--Last night Sonya has been weak and irritable. I could not go to sleep till after two o'clock. I woke up feeling weak, I was awakened. Sonya did not sleep all night. I went to her. It was something insane. "Dushan poisoned her," etc. I am tired and cannot stand it any more and feel quite ill. I feel I cannot be loving and reasonable, absolutely cannot. At present I want only to keep away and to take no part. There is nothing else I can do, or else I have seriously thought of escaping. Now then, show your Christianity. _C'est le moment ou jamais._ But I awfully want to go away. I doubt if my presence here is of any use to anyone. Help me, my G.o.d, teach me. There is only one thing I want--to do not my will, but Thine. I write and ask myself: Is it true? Am I posing to myself? Help me, help me, help me!

_July 22, 1909_ (from a diary).--Yesterday I did not eat anything and did not sleep. As usual I felt very wretched. I am wretched now, but my heart is melted. Yes--to love those that do us evil, you say; will try it. I try, but badly. I think more and more of going away and making a settlement about property.... I don't know what I shall do.

Help, help, help! This "help" means that I am weak, bad. It is a good thing that I am at any rate conscious of this....

_July 26, 1909_ (from a diary).--After dinner I spoke of Sweden; she became terribly, hysterically irritated. She wanted to poison herself with morphia. I tore it out of her hands and threw it under the stairs. I struggled. But when I went to bed and thought it over calmly I decided not to go. I went and told her. She is pitiful; I am truly sorry for her. But how instructive it is! I did nothing except inwardly work at myself. And as soon as I started on my own self, everything was solved. I have been ill all day....

_August 28, 1909_ (from a diary).--Dreadfully, dreadfully miserable and oppressed; depression partly produced by letter from Berlin, in reference to Sofya Andreyevna's letter and the article in the _Petersburg News_, saying that Tolstoy is a deceiver and a hypocrite.

To my shame I did not rejoice at being reviled, but was hurt, and the whole evening was agonisingly depressed. Go away? More and more often the question presents itself.

_August 29, 1909_ (from a diary).--Painful feeling and desire (a bad one?) to run away, and uncertainty what is my duty to G.o.d. In calm moments, as now, I know that what is necessary above all is to do nothing, to bear all, to remain in love.

_September 4, 1909_ (from a diary).--The false judgment of men about me, the necessity for remaining in this position--however hard it all is, I begin at times to understand its beneficial effect on my soul.

_November 15, 1909_ (from a diary).--The misery, almost despair, at my idle life in senseless luxury, in the midst of men who are overworked and deprived of the essentials, of the possibility of satisfying their first needs, keeps growing more intense. It is agonising to live like this, and I do not know how to help myself and them. In weak moments I long to die. Help me, O Father, to do Thy will up to the last minute. Meditation about myself which I am learning, and to which I am giving myself up more and more of late, has advanced me much, very much; but, as always, true progress in goodness ... only reveals one's imperfection more and more.

_January 8, 1910_ (from the letters).--I live wrongly in wealth, though myself I have nothing, but with those who live in wealth.

_January 8, 1910_ (from the letters).--If man grows weak he is weaker than water. If he grows strong he is stronger than rock. What strengthens me most in difficult moments is the sense that the very thing that is worrying one is the material on which we are called to work, and the material is the more precious the more difficult the moments.

_March 19, 1910_ (from the letters).--In bad moments think that what is happening to you is the material on which you are called to work.

To me at any rate this thought and the feeling evoked by it is a great help.

_April 13, 1910_ (from a diary).--I woke at five and kept thinking how to get out, what to do, and I don't know. I thought of writing--and writing is loathsome while I remain in this life. Speak to her? Go away? Change? By degrees ... it seems as though the last is the only thing I shall and can do, and yet it is painful. Perhaps, certainly, indeed that is good. Help me, Thou Who art in me, in everything, and Who exists and Whom I implore and love. I am weeping now as I love.

_April 14, 1910_ (from the letters).--You ask whether I like the life in which I find myself. No, I don't like it. I don't like it because I am living with my own people in luxury while there are poverty and want around me, and I cannot get away from the luxury, and I cannot help the poverty and want. For this I do not like my life. I like it in that it is in my power to act, and that I can act, and that I do act in the measure of my strength in accordance with the teaching of Christ, to love G.o.d and my neighbour. To love G.o.d means to love the perfection of goodness and to approach it as far as one can. To love one's neighbour is to love all people alike as one's brothers and sisters. It is this, and this alone, that I am striving for, and since, little by little, however poorly, I am approaching it I do not grieve, but only rejoice. You ask me too, if I rejoice, at what do I rejoice, and what joy do I expect? I rejoice that I can carry out to the measure of my strength the task set me by my Master; to work for the setting up of that Kingdom of G.o.d to which we are all striving.

_June 4, 1910_ (from a diary).--I had a good ride; I came back and found the Circa.s.sian who was taking Prokofy. I was horribly distressed and thought of going away, and now at five in the morning I don't look on that as impossible.

_July 2, 1910_ (from the letters).--All will be well if we do not grow weak.... Very painful, but the better for that.

_July 16, 1910_ (from the letters).--I feel well ... a little weaker than usual, but still well.... Why, really when I am calm I actually feel that in all this there is more of good than bad, incomparably more. It is absurd even to compare the little unpleasantnesses, agitations, privations, and the sense of growing nearer to G.o.d.

_July 20, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am grateful to you for having helped and helping me to bear the trial that I have deserved and that is needful for my soul.... And please do help us both not to grow weak and not to do anything of which we shall repent.

_July 29, 1910_ (from the letters).--We will each of us try to act as we ought, and it will be all right. I am trying with all my might, and I feel that that is the only thing that matters.

_July 31, 1910_ (from the letters).--If only we do not ourselves spoil things all will be as it ought to be--that is, well.

_August 7, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am sorry for her, and she is undoubtedly more to be pitied than I, so that it would be wrong of me to increase her sufferings out of pity for myself. Though I am tired I am really all right. Ever nearer and nearer comes the revelation of the certainly blessed, fore-divined mystery, and getting near it cannot but rejoice me.

_August 9, 1910_ (from the letters).--The nearer one is to death, or anyway the more vividly one thinks of it (and thinking of it is thinking of one's own true life which is independent of death), the more important the one needful work of life becomes, and the clearer it is that for the securing of that non-infringement of love with anyone, I must not undertake anything, but only _do nothing_.

_August 14, 1910_, morning (from the letters).--I know that all this present particularly morbid state may seem affected, intentionally worked up (to some extent that is so), but the chief point is that it is anyway illness, perfectly obvious illness, that deprives her of will and self-control. If it is said that she is herself to blame for this relaxation of her will, for giving in to her egoism, which began long ago, the fault is of the past, of long ago. Now she is quite irresponsible and one can feel for her nothing but pity, and it is impossible, for me at any rate, utterly impossible, _contrecourir_ (to run counter to) her, and so unmistakably increase her sufferings.

I do not believe that the complete vindication of my decision opposed to her wishes would be good for her, and if I did believe it I still could not do that. Apart from the fact that I think that I ought to act in this way, the point is that I know from experience that when I insist, I am miserable, and when I give way I am not only light-hearted, I am even joyful.... I have been ill for the last few days, but to-day I am much better. And I am particularly glad of it to-day, because there is anyway fewer chances of one's saying or doing wrong when one is physically well.

_August 14, 1910_, evening (from the letters).--I agree that one ought not to make promises to anyone, and especially to a person in the state in which she is now, but I am bound now not by any promise, but simply by pity, by compa.s.sion, which I have been feeling particularly strongly to-day as I wrote to you. Her position is very painful, no one can see it and not sympathise with it.

_August 20, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Without exaggeration I can say that I recognise that what has happened was inevitable, and therefore profitable for my soul. I think so at any rate in my better moments.

_August 25, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Of myself I may say that I am very well here, even my health, which was affected too by agitation, is far better. I am trying to behave as justly and firmly as possible in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and it seems as though I am more or less successful in my object of calming her.... I am often terribly sorry for her. When one thinks what it must be for her lying awake alone at nights, for she gets no sleep for the greater part of the night, with a confused but painful consciousness that she is not loved, but is burdensome to everyone except the children, one cannot but pity her.

_August 28, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Do not think that it is easy for me to advise the manly, serene and even joyful endurance of suffering because I do not myself experience it. Do not think that, because all men are liable to sufferings which may be regarded as objectless torments, or as trials, the mild and religious endurance of which may, strange as it sounds, be trans.m.u.ted to a greater spiritual blessing. We are all liable to these trials, and often to much harder ones than those which you are enduring. May G.o.d who lives in you help you to be conscious of yourself. And when there is that consciousness there is no suffering and there is no death.

_August 30, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Sofya Andreyevna went away from here yesterday, and took a very touching farewell of me and Tanya and her husband, with evident sincerity begging forgiveness of all with tears in her eyes. She is inexpressibly pathetic. What will happen later I cannot imagine. "Do what you ought before your conscience and G.o.d, and what will be will be," I say to myself and try to act on it.

_September 9, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--She was very much irritated, not irritated (_ce n'est pas le mot_, that is not the right word), but _morbidly_ agitated. I underline that word. She is unhappy and cannot control herself. I have only just been talking to her. She came thinking I should go away with her, but I have refused without fixing the date of my going away, and that greatly distressed her. What I shall do later I don't know. I shall try to bear my cross day by day.

_September 16, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am still as before in a middling condition physically, and spiritually I try to look upon my painful or rather difficult relations with Sofya Andreyevna as a trial which is good for me, and which it depends upon myself to turn into a blessing, but I rarely succeed in this. One thing I can say: not in my brain but with my sides, as the peasants say, I have come to a clear understanding of the difference between resistance which is returning evil for evil, and the resistance of not giving way in those of one's actions which one recognises as one's duty to one's conscience and to G.o.d. I will try.

_September 18, 1910_ (from the letters).--I understand now from experience that all that we call suffering is for our good.

_October 6, 1910_ (from the letters).--She is ill and all the rest of it, but it is impossible not to pity her and not to be indulgent to her.

_October 17, 1910_ (from the letters).--Yesterday was a very serious day. Others will describe the physical details to you, but I want to give you my own account from the inside. I pity and pity her, and rejoice that at times I love her without effort. It was so last night when she came in penitent and began seeing about warming my room, and in spite of her exhaustion and weakness pushed the shutters and screened the windows, taking pains and trouble about my ... bodily comfort. What's to be done if there are people for whom, and I believe only for a time, the reality of spiritual life is unattainable. Yesterday evening I was almost on the point of going away to Kotchety, but now I am glad I did not go. To-day I feel physically weak, but serene in spirit.

_October 26, 1910_ (from a diary).--It is very oppressive for me in this house of lunatics.

_October 26, 1910_ (from the letters).--The third thing is not so much a thought as a feeling, and a bad feeling--the desire to change my position. I feel something unbefitting, rather shameful, in my position. Sometimes I look upon it as I ought, as a blessing but sometimes I struggle against it and am revolted....

_October 27, 1910_ (from a diary).--It seems _bad_ but is really good; the oppressiveness of our relations keeps increasing.

_October 29, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am waiting to see what will come of the family deliberation--I think, good. In any case, however, my return to my former life has become still more difficult--almost impossible, owing to the reproaches which will now be showered upon me, and the still smaller share of kindness which will be shown me. I cannot and will not enter into any sort of negotiations--what will be will be--only to sin as little as possible.... I cannot boast of my physical and spiritual condition, they are both weak and shattered. I feel most of all sorry for her. If only that pity were quite free from an admixture of _rancune_ (resentment), and that I cannot boast of.

_October 29, 1910_; Optin Monastery. (From a diary.)--I have been much depressed all day and physically weak.... As I came here I was thinking all the time on the road, of the way out of my and her position, and could not think of any way out of it, but yet there will be one whether one likes it or not; it will come, and not be what one foresees. Yes, think only of how to avoid sin, and let come what will come. That is not my affair. I have taken up ... the _Circle of Reading_, and, just now, reading Number Twenty-eight was struck by the direct answer to my position: trial is what I need, it is beneficial for me. I am going to bed at once. Help me, O Lord.

_November 3, 1910_; Station Astapovo. (From a diary; the last words written by Leo Nikolaevitch in his diary.)--_Fais ce que doit adv...._[30] And it is all for the best both for others and for me.

The extracts from the diary and letters of Tolstoy that have been quoted, though far from exhausting all the material, show sufficiently clearly what Leo Nikolaevitch had to endure in connection with his family and domestic conditions in the course of the last thirty years of his life. In it of course all aspects of his spiritual growth are not touched upon, the whole course of his inner development during that period is not explained. But what is revealed to us in these extracts is sufficient to excite the warmest sympathy for Leo Nikolaevitch in his great and prolonged ordeal, and to inspire the deepest respect for his touching ability to blame himself for everything, and always to strive not towards what he desired but towards his duty. At the same time there is here revealed to us in its general features the path by which he came to the conviction that if we suffer spiritually we are ourselves to blame.

As is the case with everyone for whom the true meaning of life is revealed, after Leo Nikolaevitch's inner awakening at the beginning of the 'eighties, his spiritual consciousness could not, of course, remain at the same point. And indeed from the fragments we have quoted we see that up to the very last days of his life it was growing and becoming more perfect, as he became more and more penetrated with purity and strength.

Becoming convinced that in spite of all his sufferings he could not draw his wife to take part in his efforts, Leo Nikolaevitch began to experience the most agonising distress, which, as we see from his diary of 1884, sometimes became so acute that he hardly had the strength to endure it. He even had moments almost of despair and as it were revolt against his fate, especially when he learned from experience that his wife was too far away from him spiritually to be his companion in the reorganisation of their lives. It was at such a moment that there broke from him that agonising cry of a tortured heart, that she would for ever remain a millstone round his neck and his children's. But at the same time he tried to accept these sufferings with meekness and submission as a trial laid upon him, and to behave with love and patience to her who evoked them. So about the same time, on one of those exceptionally rare occasions when in conversation with me he permitted himself to touch on his relations with his wife, he spoke approximately as follows:

"It is impossible to blame Sofya Andreyevna. It is not her fault that she does not follow me. Why, what she clings to so obstinately now is the very thing in which I trained her for many years. Apart from that, in the early days of my awakening I was too irritable and insisted on trying to convince her that I was right. In those days I put my new conception of life before her in a form so repellent and unacceptable to her that I quite put her off. And now I feel that through my own fault she can never come to the truth by my way. That door is closed for her. But, on the other hand, I notice with joy that by ways peculiar to her alone, and quite incomprehensible to me, she seems at times to be gradually moving in the same direction."

About the same time Leo Nikolaevitch wrote to me:

"'He who loves not his brother, he dwelleth in death.' I have learned, but to my cost. I did not love, I had malice against my neighbours, and I was dying and dead. I began to be afraid of death; not afraid exactly, but bewildered before it. But love had but to rise up and I rose up again. I had forgotten Christ's first precept, 'Be not wrathful.' So simple, so small and so immense! If there is one man whom one does not love one is lost, one is dead. I have learned that by experience."--(Letter, December 28, 1885.)

At that period of his life Leo Nikolaevitch wrote in his diary the reflection which has already appeared in print concerning the chloroform of love, which expresses with remarkable vividness his recognition of the way we ought to help men who have gone astray: "At first I thought, Can one point out to people their mistakes, their sins, their faults, without hurting them? We have chloroform and cocaine for physical pain, but not for the soul. I thought this, and at once it came into my head, it is untrue--there is such a spiritual chloroform. They perform the operation of amputating a leg or an arm with chloroform, but they perform the operation of reforming a man painfully, stifling the reform with pain, exciting the worse disease--vindictiveness. But there is a spiritual chloroform, and it has long been known,--always the same--love. And that is not all: in physical disease one may do good by an operation without chloroform, but the soul is such a sensitive creature that an operation performed upon it without the chloroform of love is never anything but injurious. Patients always know it and ask for chloroform, and know that it ought to be used.... The sick man is in pain and he screams, hides the sore spot and says, 'You won't heal me, you won't heal me, and I don't want to be healed, I would rather get worse if you cannot heal me without pain....' And he is right ... you cannot drag a man straight out when he is tangled in a net--you will hurt him. You must disentangle the netting gently and firmly first. This delay, this disentangling, is the chloroform of love.... This I almost understood before, now I quite understand and begin to feel it...."

(Tolstoy's diary, January 25, 1889. Cf. _Biography of L. N. Tolstoy_ by P. I. Biryukov, Vol. III. chap. iii.)