At the beginning of the 'eighties, at the time when the spiritual regeneration of Leo Nikolaevitch was taking place, though his new attitude of completely disapproving of property was not yet fully defined, he made over to his wife an authorisation for the publication and sale of his collected works, the income from which was the principal source of the material means by which his family lived. Later on, when he came to realise that property of every kind was wrong, he did not, in spite of all his
efforts, succeed in persuading Sofya Andreyevna to renounce this income voluntarily and to give him back the authorisation he had given her. He did not feel morally justified in forcibly depriving her of what she clung to so passionately, and what against the will of Leo Nikolaevitch she considered had been put at the disposal of the family for ever. This trading in his works by his wife against his wish was, in his own words, one of the most agonising sufferings of his life. All his new works, however, those that had appeared after 1881 and those destined to appear later, he thereupon freed from the monopoly of his family, announcing in a letter to the newspapers, that all who wished could reprint them without any fee. Sofya Andreyevna had, willy-nilly, to submit to this decision on the part of the author. But every time when, instead of articles of a religious and social character, which did not in the literary market command the immense value enjoyed by his artistic works, Leo Nikolaevitch undertook any work in artistic form, Sofya Andreyevna was so much excited and so persistently demanded that the publication of the new work should be handed over to her for the benefit of the family, that it
completely destroyed the spiritual tranquillity which he needed for concentrated creative work.
Many times repeated, these family scenes led him to decide to print no more works of art during his lifetime.[14] And this decision of his is the real reason why, during the latter period of his life, he gave so little to humanity in that sphere.
In the end Sofya Andreyevna began quite openly to declare, even in the presence of Leo Nikolaevitch, that after his death, according to the advice of lawyers whom she had consulted, his renunciation of all literary property in the works of the second period would lose its validity, and that those works also would, like all the rest,
become the property of his family. Besides this she
began to insist that Leo Nikolaevitch should give her a fresh authorisation for the sale of his writings of the first period for a long time in the future and also give her the right to prosecute at law anyone who should infringe the copyright.
In his diary for 1909 Leo Nikolaevitch writes: "Last night I felt wretched after talking to Sofya Andreyevna about publishing my works and prosecuting. If she only knew and understood how she alone poisons the last hours, days, months, of my life! I do not know how to say it to her and have no hope that anything one could say would produce the slightest effect upon her."[15]
Becoming convinced that this greed of Sofya Andreyevna on behalf of the family would only increase with years, and that she really was capable of taking possession of all his works after his death and of depriving other publishers of the possibility of printing them, Leo Nikolaevitch felt himself morally bound to guard against such a monopolisation of his writings. And he was so firmly convinced that it was his duty before God and men to do this, that in spite of all that he had to endure on account of it afterwards, he remained unshaken upon this point right up to his death, which was brought about by the spiritual sufferings which were inflicted upon him in consequence of this.[16]
After carefully thinking over all the circumstances of the case and taking advice of persons conversant with the subject, Leo Nikolaevitch came to the conclusion that if he really desired that his writings should be freely accessible to everyone after