1876
The publication of Anna Karénina was renewed in the first four numbers of the Russian Messenger for 1876.
On 1st March Tolstoy writes to Fet:
Things are still not all right with us. My wife does not get over her last illness, coughs, gets thin, and has first fever and then headaches. And therefore the house lacks well-being, and I lack mental tranquillity, which I now particularly need for my work. The end of winter and beginning of spring is always my chief time for work, and I must finish my novel, which now wearies me.... I always hope a tooth will come loose in your jaw, or in your thrashing machine, and cause you to go to Moscow. Then I shall spin a cobweb at Kozlóvka [the nearest station to Yásnaya] and catch you.
In April Fet wrote to Tolstoy to say that he had been seriously ill, had thought he was dying, and 'wished to call you to see how I departed.' On 29th April Tolstoy replies in a letter notable because it gives us a glimpse of the progress he had made in the fierce five-year inner struggle with doubt which preceded the production of his Confession:
I am grateful to you for thinking of calling me to see your departure, when you supposed it was near. I will do the same when I get ready to go thither, if I am able to think. No one will be so necessary to me at that moment as you and my brother. When death draws near, intercourse with people who in this life look beyond its bounds, is precious and cheering; and you and those rare real people I have met in life, always stand on the very verge and see clearly, just because they look now at Nirvana—the illimitable, the unknown—and now at Sansara; and that glance at Nirvana strengthens their sight. But worldly people, however much they may talk about God, are unpleasant to you and me, and must be a torment when one is dying, for they do not see what we see, namely the God who 'is more indefinite and distant, but loftier and more indubitable,' as was said in that article.
You are ill and think of death, and I am alive and do not cease thinking of and preparing for the same thing.... Much that I have thought, I have tried to express in the last chapter of the April number of the Russian Messenger [Anna Karénina, Part I, Chap. XX].
The passage referred to, telling of the death of Lévin's brother, is evidently based on the death of Tolstoy's own brother Demetrius; and it may here be mentioned that many characters in Anna Karénina are drawn more or less closely from life. For instance, Agáfya Miháylovna, the servant, was a real person, and that was her real name. She died at Yásnaya only a few years ago. Yásnaya Polyána itself, in many of its details, is also described in the novel.
On 12th May Tolstoy again writes to Fet:
It is already five days since I received the horse, and every day I prepare but never make time to write to you. Here the spring and summer life has begun, and our house is full of guests and of bustle. This summer life seems to me like a dream: it contains some slight remains of my real, winter life, but consists chiefly of visions, now pleasant and now unpleasant, from some absurd world not ruled by sane sense. Among these visions came your beautiful stallion. I am very much obliged to you for it. Where am I to send the money to?...