APPENDIX I
In view of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch's diaries and letters have not yet been published in their entirety, I think it essential to make a note in connection with the character of the extracts which I have made from them in this book. These passages have been selected with the special object of illustrating Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude to suffering in general and to his own sufferings in particular. Owing to this, their context is inevitably one-sided and cannot give a general idea of his prevailing spiritual mood during the last thirty years of his life. That general mood, in spite of the conditions which oppressed Leo Nikolaevitch externally, was doubtless one of joy in life, in accordance with the characteristics of his nature, and filled with inner satisfaction, as all those who were in close communication with him for any length of time during that period can testify. And in this fact, i.e. in his preserving those characteristics in spite of all the trials to which he was subjected throughout that whole period, I see one of the most remarkable aspects of his heroic endurance.
Indeed one has but for one moment to enter in spirit into his position at that time to be truly amazed at what he succeeded in attaining in his inner life. Love for freedom in general and for personal independence was to an exceptional degree characteristic of his powerful personality. The demands of creative work attracted him to prolonged absences far from home in the midst of the most varied natural scenery, and the most different strata of humanity. The working of his mind after his spiritual awakening required the closest association with working people. For the satisfaction of his spiritual needs he required the possibility of receiving unhindered in his house all and each of those with whom he would have liked to hold intercourse, without any limitation or restriction, and consequently to show hospitality, to seat at his table on occasions, to put up for the night both the peasant of the district who had come to pay him a visit, and the passing pilgrim weary from the road, and the visitor who had come from afar seeking spiritual intercourse and help.... And of all this so needful to Tolstoy as artist and thinker, and above all as a man leading a spiritual life,—of all this he was deprived, thanks to the egoism of his family and the class prejudices ruling in his house, in which
a woman's self-will was paramount. Being completely indifferent to his spiritual needs and callous to his sufferings, Sofya Andreyevna expected him in his old age, as in the first period of their life, to be continually at her side in spite of the spiritual change that had taken place in her husband, and only rarely agreed to his being absent for short intervals, and then with the greatest difficulty. Leo Nikolaevitch could not refuse these demands of hers without destroying the very small share of domestic peace without which his life in the home would have lost any sort of meaning. And in spite of all the oppressiveness of these domestic conditions, which defy description in words and, lasting as they did over thirty years, for us ordinary people would have been truly shattering, Leo Nikolaevitch, far from giving way to despair, did not even complain of his fate. On the contrary, he blamed himself for his sufferings, ascribing them to his own imperfection, and making the utmost effort to perform his family duties as irreproachably as possible. "I am all right, quite all right," he often said and wrote to his friends. At times he even displayed a childlike gaiety, and sometimes jested at the very circumstances which caused him the most suffering.
This remarkable circumstance I explain
solely by the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch firmly made it his aim to do nothing but the will of God. This, and only this, he set before him as his fundamental task, and for the sake of carrying it out he consciously denied himself the satisfaction of his personal needs and any self-gratification during the whole of that second long period of his married life. And denying himself all the so-called joys of life, he incidentally attained true spiritual joy and peace, true blessedness.
The subject of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner life is, however, outside the limits of our present investigation and I have referred to it only that the reader might not receive a quite mistaken impression that Leo Nikolaevitch was lacking in that courageous joy in life affecting all around him, which, on the contrary, he possessed in the highest degree.[31]
FOOTNOTE
[31] As I am touching upon the general mood of Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual life, I foresee that the extracts I have made from his diaries and letters will in many readers arouse a feeling of regret that they have hitherto not had the opportunity of reading this precious material in its entirety. And therefore I think it needful to state that the principal obstacles to the continuation of the series of issues of Tolstoy's diaries, begun several years ago, and to the systematic publication of all his writings, are now happily overcome, and the first complete edition of all Tolstoy's works is at the present time being zealously prepared for the press.