If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason
October 30, 2014 6:35 AM   Subscribe

Sofiya Tolstoy’s Defense [The New Yorker] In her own writings, Leo Tolstoy’s wife offered a rebuttal of the views that he set out in “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
“The Kreutzer Sonata” caused an international scandal at a time when sexuality and gender roles were the subject of widespread debate. Banned both in Russia (where Tolstoy had long struggled with the censors) and in the United States, the novella led many men and women to embrace celibacy and modesty, in keeping with Tolstoy’s Christian asceticism, which also emphasized nonviolence, vegetarianism, physical labor, and poverty. One particularly enthusiastic young Romanian castrated himself. Other readers were appalled. In 1890, Zola told the New York Herald that the novella was a “nightmare, born of a diseased imagination.” Tolstoy himself had his doubts. In an 1891 letter, he wrote, “There was something nasty in The Kreutzer Sonata … something bad about the motives that guided me in writing it.”
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy.
Full text of The Kreutzer Sonata in the original Russian.
posted by Fizz (19 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
Didn't realize the quote was cut off, here is the full quotation.
"If one has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for living." ~ Tolstoy
posted by Fizz at 6:36 AM on October 30, 2014


Isn't that quote basically just rephrasing Ecclesiastes?
posted by Slothrup at 6:40 AM on October 30, 2014


Tolstoy's misogyny is just so completely over-the-top that it makes it hard to talk about it in the context of 19th century opinons about women. In all of his novels, he is just so obviously driven nuts by women.
posted by ennui.bz at 6:41 AM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


I wish I could time-travel, so I could call Tolstoy a terrible monster who wouldn't know Jesus if he cranked him in the backside with a rope-whip. And possibly sock him in the mouth. What a jerk.
posted by Poppa Bear at 6:50 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Tolstoy's misogyny is just so completely over-the-top that it makes it hard to talk about it in the context of 19th century opinons about women. In all of his novels, he is just so obviously driven nuts by women.

Which makes Sofiya and her writing and resistance so admirable:
She decided to shake off the shame by petitioning the tsar (who loved Tolstoy’s fiction but felt very sorry for his wife) to lift the publication ban on the novella: by defending it, she hoped to persuade the world that it wasn’t really about her. When the tsar granted her request, she wrote in her diary, “I cannot help secretly exulting in my success in overcoming all the obstacles, that I managed to obtain an interview with the Tsar, and that I, a woman, have achieved something that nobody else could have done!”
posted by Fizz at 6:51 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


She decided to shake off the shame by petitioning the tsar (who loved Tolstoy’s fiction but felt very sorry for his wife)...

But that's the thing, you can talk about a society which is patriarchal and misogynist, but then you have characters like Tolstoy whose fear and hatred of women is so irrational that even the Tsar feels pity for Tolstoy's wife. It's funny, we can't actually discuss this feature of Tolstoy's work without condemning and dismissing him... which leads to articles like this New Yorker piece where the whole premise is Tolstoy's pathological hatred of women, but the author can't actual say this because, to acknowledge this is equivalent to declaring Tolstoy not worth reading and thus this essay not worth writing.
posted by ennui.bz at 7:24 AM on October 30, 2014


the author can't actual say this because, to acknowledge this is equivalent to declaring Tolstoy not worth reading

Are you actually claiming that it is an axiomatic truth that Tolstoy is "not worth reading"? Really?
posted by yoink at 7:54 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


equivalent to declaring Tolstoy not worth reading and thus this essay not worth writing.

I really don't think this is the case. Plenty of writers, artists, and musicians were fairly terrible people and that doesn't negate the value of their work.

It's kind of bizarre and sad to think that that a creator's personal failings transform their art from great to junk. If a work by Tolstoy was good without knowing what the man was like, it's good after knowing too.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:11 AM on October 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Are you actually claiming that it is an axiomatic truth that Tolstoy is "not worth reading"? Really?

I had read ennui.bz as saying "in our current cultural situation, we are not allowed to say that an author is misogynist and has pathological hatred of women, because to say that is considered the equivalent of saying that he is not worth reading - therefore, even authors who do have a pathological hatred of women can't be called out". Kind of the "but if you say he harassed you, you'll ruin a nice young boy's reputation" of literature.

Perhaps I was wrong in my interpretation, though!
posted by Frowner at 9:10 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yes, Tolstoy had a problem with women, but didn't the entire era have a problem with women? Tolstoy was a genius, and no doubt a tortured soul. From the New Yorker piece:
"In 1890, Zola told the New York Herald that the novella was a “nightmare, born of a diseased imagination.” Tolstoy himself had his doubts. In an 1891 letter, he wrote, “There was something nasty in The Kreutzer Sonata … something bad about the motives that guided me in writing it.”"

Doesn't this indicate that Tolstoy was conflicted? Yes, he was abusive towards his wife; that shouldn't be excused, ever. That said, Tolstoy - like so many others - act out their insecurities and weaknesses within the context of their times. He had serious problems with women, and the times permitted him to project those problems into his work and into his life. Sad, all around.
posted by Vibrissae at 9:30 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


in our current cultural situation, we are not allowed to say that an author is misogynist and has pathological hatred of women

If we're "not allowed to say this" about Tolstoy in our "current cultural situation", it's odd that so many people seem to be perfectly well aware of it--and that it is, in fact, something that has been endlessly and openly rehashed in discussions of Tolstoy since, well, the nineteenth century.

Tolstoy was a complex, often contradictory figure. There are feminist literary critics, in fact, who have made arguments trying to enlist Tolstoy as a feminist thinker malgré lui. There are many others who, recognizing his own personal "pathological hatred of women" find that the women he imagines in his greatest writings are astonishingly vibrant, fully realized people who show little or no signs of being mere props designed to advance his personal theories about women. There's a reason that Virginia Woolf, for example, thought Tolstoy the greatest of all novelists and it's not because Virginia Woolf was a vicious misogynist. Trying to sum up what Tolstoy's fiction "means" and what its value for us as readers must be by reducing it to the more repellent aspects of the crackpot philosophies he turned to in his later years is just silly.
posted by yoink at 9:31 AM on October 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


Not much to say here; obviously Tolstoy was one of the many, many people who wrote well and lived badly. But I'm curious about this bit from the first link:

provoked by her youthful beauty and sexy sweater

Sweater?! The Russian word is джерси, the equivalent of English jersey, and although you can make all sorts of things out of jersey, I'm pretty sure Russian women weren't wearing sweaters in the mid-19th century (the period being reminisced about). I wonder why Katz translated it that way?
posted by languagehat at 10:00 AM on October 30, 2014



If we're "not allowed to say this" about Tolstoy in our "current cultural situation", it's odd that so many people seem to be perfectly well aware of it--and that it is, in fact, something that has been endlessly and openly rehashed in discussions of Tolstoy since, well, the nineteenth century.


I feel like there's things that "everybody knows" that are none the less not seen as legitimate to bring up in "official" settings, and that's where Tolstoy's misogyny sits. (I mean, I really like Tolstoy.) (An example to try to clarify what I mean: when I was growing up, "everyone knew" that there were lots of pedophiles in the church. It was just...I can't even remember a time when I did not know about that. And yet, it didn't become Official Knowledge About The Church until much later - you would be viewed as an unacceptable person if you brought it up in casual conversation, or treated it as something that everyone did know, ie an accepted fact. The very condition of "everyone knowing" prevented discussion.)

So I think that Tolstoy's misogyny is that same kind of thing that "everyone knows". People know it and talk about it - in feminist contexts, in certain scholarly contexts - but when everyone is making big public official statements about "Oh, Tolstoy, what a great writer of the classics", it is socially forbidden to say "what a great writer of the classics and also what a giant misogynist". If you try that, you start getting treated like anyone who says anything feminist in public ever gets treated, ie like you're a delusional killjoy who has no idea what is important.
posted by Frowner at 10:00 AM on October 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


when everyone is making big public official statements about "Oh, Tolstoy, what a great writer of the classics", it is socially forbidden to say "what a great writer of the classics and also what a giant misogynist".

I don't know what you mean by "big public official statements." Certainly it is not true that it is something you're "not allowed" to say when writing about Tolstoy in, say, The New Yorker. Google "Tolstoy misogynist" and the notion that this is something people are suppressing or only whisper to each other in the corridors of academe or something will wither away pretty quickly.
posted by yoink at 10:07 AM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


We keep having this discussion, don't we? HP Lovecraft on race, Bill Cosby on rape, Roman Polanski on pedophilia. Does bad, even criminal behavior, disfigure the work of an artist? I don't know. I just know I haven't picked up an Orson Scott Card (homophobe) book in ages, and I used to enjoy his work.
posted by SPrintF at 12:43 PM on October 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


We keep having this discussion, don't we? HP Lovecraft on race, Bill Cosby on rape, Roman Polanski on pedophilia. Does bad, even criminal behavior, disfigure the work of an artist? I don't know. I just know I haven't picked up an Orson Scott Card (homophobe) book in ages, and I used to enjoy his work.
posted by SPrintF at 3:43 PM on October 30 [+] [!]


If you're interested in this subject, might I suggest the following critical theory/works:

Death of the Author by Roland Barthes
What is an Author? [PDF]

RE: Barthes:
In his essay, Barthes argues against the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of the author's identity — their political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal attributes — to distill meaning from the author's work. In this type of criticism, the experiences and biases of the author serve as a definitive "explanation" of the text. For Barthes, this method of reading may be apparently tidy and convenient but is actually sloppy and flawed:

"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."
posted by Fizz at 2:32 PM on October 30, 2014


I didn't note it properly above but the link for: "What is an Author?" is by theorist and literary critic Michel Foucault.
posted by Fizz at 3:57 PM on October 30, 2014


Excuse my ignorance but I thought "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy showed insight into the hypocritical attitude Russian men had to women. He must have been a mysogynist with great insight. I have known many women who have read this book, the criticism was that it was depressing, that's enough to make a book unreadable.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 11:40 PM on October 30, 2014


> Excuse my ignorance but I thought "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy showed insight

Of course it does! Tolstoy was a great writer with tremendous insight into both men and women; the writer part of his brain was separate from the misogynist asshole part. I don't know how that works, but thank goodness it does or we'd hardly have any art.

> the criticism was that it was depressing, that's enough to make a book unreadable.

I feel sorry for people who need literature to be cheerful and uplifting.
posted by languagehat at 8:21 AM on October 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


« Older "I was just using it to sound different"   |   I cried and cried in my Mad Men dress. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments