1847
The fact that his brother Sergius had finished his studies and was leaving, strengthened Tolstoy's dissatisfaction with the University; and finally, without waiting for the May examinations at which he might have qualified for the third year's course, we find him, soon after Easter 1847, applying to have his name removed from the University roll 'on account of ill-health and family affairs.' He really had been in hospital in March, but the plea of ill-health was a mere excuse.
His failure to take a degree was a source of great annoyance and disappointment to him, and it must not be supposed that he left Kazán with any idea of taking life easily or neglecting further study.
From the time he was a boy he had kept a diary of every little sin he had committed, and especially of any offence against the Seventh Commandment, in order that he might repent, and if possible refrain for the future, and his diary shows how full he was at this time of strenuous resolutions. During the last year of his life at Kazán he made close friends with a student named Dyákof (the Nehlúdof of Boyhood), and under his influence had developed
an ecstatic worship of the ideal of virtue, and the conviction that it is man's destiny continually to perfect himself. To put all mankind right and to destroy all human vices and misfortunes, appeared a matter that could well be accomplished. It seemed quite easy and simple to put oneself right, to acquire all the virtues, and to be happy.
Here are some rules he set himself at that time:
1. To fulfil what I set myself, despite all obstacles.
2. To fulfil well what I do undertake.
3. Never to refer to a book for what I have forgotten, but always to try to recall it to mind myself.
4. Always to make my mind work with its utmost power.
5. Always to read and think aloud.
6. Not to be ashamed of telling people who interrupt me, that they are hindering me: letting them first feel it, but (if they do not understand) telling them, with an apology.
Deciding to settle at Yásnaya for two years, he drew up a list of studies he intended to pursue for his own mental development, and to qualify for a University degree; and this list was, as the reader will see, appalling in its scope.
1. To study the whole course of law necessary to get my degree.
2. To study practical medicine, and to some extent its theory also.
3. To study: French, Russian, German, English, Italian, and Latin.
4. To study agriculture, theoretically and practically.
5. To study History, Geography, and Statistics.
6. To study Mathematics (the High School course).
7. To write my [University] thesis.
8. To reach the highest perfection I can in music and painting.
9. To write down rules (for my conduct).
10. To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences, and,
11. To write essays on all the subjects I study.
Such rules and resolutions abound in Tolstoy's Diary. After failing to act up to them, he again and again gathers his energies and maps out for himself plans of life and courses of study sufficient to tax the energies of an intellectual giant.
As to his religious opinions at this time, he tells us:
I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it in childhood and all through my boyhood and youth. But before I left the University, in my second year, at the age of eighteen, I no longer believed anything I had been taught. (Confession.)
His Diary nevertheless shows that he prayed frequently and earnestly; the fact no doubt being, that though intellectually he discarded the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, in times of trouble or distress he instinctively appealed to God for help. His opinions were wavering and immature, as he himself tells us in another passage:
The religious beliefs taught me in childhood disappeared... and as from the time I was fifteen I began to read philosophic works, my rejection of those beliefs very soon became a conscious one. From the age of sixteen I ceased going to Church and fasting of my own accord. I did not believe what had been taught me from childhood, but I believed in something. What it was I believed in, I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God; but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I could also not have said.
Looking back on that time now, I see clearly that my faith—my only real faith, that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse to my life—was a belief in perfecting oneself. But in what this perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could not have said. I tried to perfect myself mentally—I studied everything I could: anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my will, I drew up rules which I tried to follow; I perfected myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of exercises and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by all kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be perfecting myself. The beginning of it all was, of course, moral perfecting; but that was soon replaced by perfecting in general: by the desire to be better, not in one's own eyes or those of God, but in the eyes of other people. And very soon this effort again changed into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more famous, more important and richer than others. (Confession.)
When speaking of Tolstoy's relations with women, it should be borne in mind that incontinence for young men was then considered so natural that few of them in his position would have felt any serious qualms of conscience about such visits to houses of ill-fame as he lets us know that he began to pay at this time. His brother Dmítry however led a chaste life, and alternating with gross lapses of conduct, we find Leo noting down for his own guidance such resolutions as the following:
To regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and to keep away from them as much as possible. From whom indeed do we get sensuality, effeminacy, frivolity in everything, and many other vices, if not from women? Whose fault is it, if not women's, that we lose our innate qualities of boldness, resolution, reasonableness, justice, etc.? Women are more receptive than men, therefore in virtuous ages women were better than we; but in the present depraved and vicious age they are worse than we are.
During his years at the University, Tolstoy saw much of his brother Dmítry, of whom he says:
I remember also at the University that when my elder brother Dmítry, suddenly in the passionate way natural to him devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church services, to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all, and even our elders, unceasingly held him up to ridicule and called him, for some unknown reason, 'Noah.' I remember that Moúsin-Poúshkin (then Curator of Kazán University), when inviting us to a dance at his house, ironically remonstrated with my brother, who had declined the invitation, and used the argument that even David danced before the Ark. I sympathised with these jokes my elders made, and deduced from them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too seriously. (Confession.)
Again we read of this brother:
His peculiarities became manifest, and are impressed on my mind from the time of our life at Kazán. Formerly in Moscow I remember that he did not fall in love, as Seryózha and I did, and was not fond of dancing or of military pageants, but studied well and strenuously.... At Kazán I, who had always imitated Seryózha, began to grow depraved.... Not only at Kazán, but even earlier, I used to take pains about my appearance. I tried to be elegant, comme il faut. There was no trace of anything of this kind in Mítenka. I think he never suffered from the usual vices of youth; he was always serious thoughtful pure and resolute, though hot-tempered, and whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability.... He wrote verses with great facility. I remember how admirably he translated Schiller's Der Jüngling am Bache, but he did not devote himself to this occupation.... He grew up associating little with others, always—except in his moments of anger—quiet and serious. He was tall, rather thin, and not very strong, with long, large hands and round shoulders. I do not know how or by what he was attracted at so early an age towards a religious life, but it began in the very first year of his University career. His religious aspirations naturally directed him to Church life, and he devoted himself to this with his usual thoroughness.
In Mítenka there must have existed that valuable characteristic which I believe my mother to have had, and which I knew in Nikólenka, but of which I was altogether devoid—complete indifference to other people's opinion about oneself. Until quite lately (in old age) I have never been able to divest myself of concern about people's opinion; but Mítenka was quite free from this. I never remember on his face that restrained smile which involuntarily appears when one is being praised. I always remember his serious quiet sad, sometimes severe, almond-shaped hazel eyes. Only in our Kazán days did we begin to pay particular attention to him, and then merely because, while Seryózha and I attached great importance to what was comme il faut—to externalities—he was careless and untidy, and we condemned him for this.
We others, especially Seryózha, kept up acquaintance with our aristocratic comrades and other young men. Mítenka on the contrary selected out of all the students a piteous-looking, poor, shabbily dressed youth, Poluboyárinof [which may be translated Half-noble]—whom a humorous fellow-student of ours called Polubezobédof [Half-dinnerless]—and consorted only with him, and with him prepared for the examinations.... We brothers, and even our aunt, looked down on Mítenka with a certain contempt for his low tastes and associates; and the same attitude was adopted by our frivolous comrades.
After their University days were over, Tolstoy saw little of his brother Demetrius; so it will be convenient here to sacrifice chronological sequence and say what more there is to tell of the latter's life and death. The material is again supplied by Tolstoy's Reminiscences.
When we divided up the family property, according to custom the estate where we lived, Yásnaya Polyána, was given to me. Seryózha, as a lover of horses and according to his wish, received Pirogóvo, where there was a stud. To Mítenka and Nikólenka were given the two other estates: to Nikólenka, Nikolsky; to Mítenka, the Kursk estate, Sherbatchóvka. I have kept a note of Mítenka's, showing how he regarded the possession of serfs. The idea that it is wrong, and that serfs ought to be liberated, was quite unknown in our circle in the 'forties. The hereditary possession of serfs seemed a necessary condition of life, and all that could be done to prevent its being an evil, was to attend not only to their material but also to their moral welfare. In this sense Mítenka wrote very seriously naïvely and sincerely. Thinking he could not do otherwise, he, a lad of twenty, when he left the University took it upon himself to direct the morality of hundreds of peasant families, and to do this (as Gógol recommended in his Letters to a Landowner) by threats of punishments and by punishments.... But, besides this duty to his serfs, there was another duty which at that time it seemed impossible not to fulfil: namely, Military or Civil service. And Mítenka decided to enter the Civil Service.
Tolstoy proceeds to tell how his brother, desiring to be useful to his country, chose legislation as his speciality, and going to Petersburg astonished the Head of the Department as well as certain aristocratic acquaintances by asking where he could find a place in which he could be useful. The friend to whom he went for advice, regarded the service of the State merely as a means of satisfying ambition, and 'such a question had probably never occurred to him before.' Eventually we find Demetrius returning home discouraged, and taking up some local work. All this, to some extent, helps us to understand Leo Tolstoy's sceptical attitude towards the institution of Government, and his strong belief that men in Government service are solely actuated by selfish motives.
Tolstoy continues:
After we had both left the University, I lost sight of him. I know he lived the same severe, abstemious life, knowing neither wine tobacco nor, above all, women, till he was twenty-six, which was very rare in those days. I know also that he associated with monks and pilgrims.... I think I was already in the Caucasus when an extraordinary change took place. He suddenly took to drinking smoking wasting money and going with women. How it happened I do not know; I did not see him at the time. I only know that his seducer was a thoroughly immoral man of very attractive appearance, the youngest son of Islényef [an uncle of the lady Leo Tolstoy subsequently married].
In this life Mítenka remained the same serious religious man he was in everything. He ransomed from the brothel a prostitute named Másha, who was the first woman he knew, and took her into his house. But this life did not last long. I believe it was less the vicious and unhealthy life he led for some months in Moscow, than his mental struggle and his qualms of conscience, that suddenly destroyed his powerful organism. He became consumptive, went to the country, was doctored in the provincial town, and took to his bed in Orél, where I saw him for the last time just after the Crimean war. He was in a dreadful state of emaciation: one could even see how his enormous hand joined on to the two bones of his lower arm; his face was all eyes, and they were still the same beautiful serious eyes, with a penetrating expression of inquiry in them. He was constantly coughing and spitting, but was loth to die, and reluctant to believe he was dying. Poor pockmarked Másha, whom he had rescued, was with him and nursed him. In my presence, at his own wish, a wonder-working icon was brought. I remember the expression of his face when he prayed to it.... He died a few days later!
Students of the didactic writings of Tolstoy's later years will notice how closely his injunctions to a man to keep to the first woman, whoever she be, with whom he has had intimate relations, correspond with the line actually followed by his brother Demetrius.
When Tolstoy left the University, however, these things were still unthought of. Let us, before returning to the events of his own life at that time, notice some books which he read between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. They included:
The Sermon on the Mount from St. Matthew's Gospel,
Rousseau's Confession and Émile, and
Dickens's David Copperfield,
which all had an 'immense' influence on him.
In another category came works which he says had 'very great' influence. These were:
Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse,
Sterne's Sentimental Journey,
Poúshkin's Eugene Onégin,
Schiller's The Robbers,
Gógol's Dead Souls,
Tourgénef's A Sportsman's Sketches,
Drouzhínin's Pólenka Sax,
Grigoróvitch's Antón Goremýka, and the chapter Tamán from Lérmontof's A Hero of Our Times.
In a third category he mentions some of Gógol's Shorter Stories, and Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, as having had 'great' influence.
In these works one finds many ideas which have been congenial to Tolstoy throughout his life, and his adhesion to which has only become firmer with age. In illustration of this, take a couple of passages from Dickens which many readers may have passed without much attention, but which to Tolstoy represented the absolute truth of the matters they touch on. David Copperfield says of Parliament:
...I considered myself reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognise the old drone in the newspapers without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that there is more of it) all the livelong session.
To most Englishmen with memories of Pym and Hampden, or personal knowledge of the lives of men who have devoted themselves disinterestedly to public affairs, Parliamentary or local, Dickens's sneer at Parliament seems but a paradox or a joke; but to Tolstoy, with his inherited dislike of Government, this testimony from a great English writer (who had served as a Parliamentary reporter) seemed irrefutable evidence of the futility of Parliaments.
Take, again, a passage in which Dickens hits a nail adroitly on the head:
Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my life, in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily when they come to several grand words in succession, for the expression of one idea—as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, and so forth—and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too. We are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on State occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them.
No modern writer has ever more carefully eschewed the practice Dickens here attacks than Tolstoy has done throughout his career. Indeed, he is far stricter than Dickens in this respect.
But much more important than the influence of Dickens was that of Rousseau, of whom Tolstoy once remarked:
I have read the whole of Rousseau—all his twenty volumes, including his Dictionary of Music. I was more than enthusiastic about him, I worshipped him. At the age of fifteen I wore a medallion portrait of him next my body instead of the Orthodox cross. Many of his pages are so akin to me that it seems to me that I must have written them myself.
Another writer who influenced Tolstoy, though to a very much smaller extent, was Voltaire, of whom he says:
I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his ridicule (of religion) not only did not shock me, but amused me very much.
Everything Tolstoy has done in his life he has done with intensity; and that this applies to the way in which he read books in his youth, is shown by the fact that we find him as an old man, in 1898, in What is Art? according the highest praise to books he had read before he was twenty-one, or even before he was fourteen.
It was in the spring of 1847 that Tolstoy, who was not yet nineteen, returned to his estate of Yásnaya Polyána, to live with his dear Aunty Tatiána; to 'perfect' himself, to study, to manage his estate, and to improve the condition of his serfs. The last part of this programme, at any rate, was not destined to have much success. Though one must never treat Tolstoy's fiction as strictly autobiographical, yet A Squire's Morning gives a very fair idea of his own efforts to improve the lot of his serfs, and of the difficulties and failures he encountered in the course of that attempt. In that story Prince Nehlúdof decides to leave the University and settle in the country, and writes to his aunt:
As I already wrote you, I found affairs in indescribable disorder. Wishing to put them right, I discovered that the chief evil is the truly pitiable, wretched condition of the serfs, and this is an evil that can only be remedied by work and patience. If you could but see two of my serfs, David and Iván, and the life they and their families lead, I am sure the sight of these two poor wretches would convince you more than all I can say in explanation of my intention.
Is it not my plain and sacred duty to care for the welfare of these seven hundred people for whom I must account to God? Will it not be a sin if, following plans of pleasure or ambition, I abandon them to the caprice of coarse Elders and stewards? And why should I seek in any other sphere opportunities of being useful and doing good, when I have before me such a noble brilliant and intimate duty?
Not only is this letter just such as Tolstoy himself may have written, but the difficulties Nehlúdof encounters when he tries to move his peasants from the ruts to which generations of serfdom had accustomed them, are just those Tolstoy himself met with: the suspicion shown by the serfs towards any fresh interference on the part of the master, and the fact that ways to which a community have grown accustomed are not easily changed by the sudden effort of a well-intentioned but inexperienced proprietor.
After spending the summer of 1847 at Yásnaya, Tolstoy went to Petersburg, where we find him settled in autumn; and early next year he entered for examination at the University of that city.