Tolstoy's flight
Sir: It is uphill work satisfying reviewers, particularly those who wish one had written the book they never quite got round to writing themselves. John Stewart Collis (1 October) is fully entitled to his interpretation of the rift between Tolstoy and his wife, even if Sonia's diary is not quite so esoteric a source as he fancies. (Does it really record that she never slept during the first four weeks of October 1910?)
My own view differs from his, but is still more different from the interpretation his hasty reading has placed upon it. I am not unduly afraid of women (I am rather fond of them), nor do I think 'in terms of poor Countess, terrible Count'. I deliberately implied a degree of banality in Leo's 'hurried and undignified' flight from home, precisely because one of the most poignant aspects of his tragic dilemma was that it brought about what did superficially appear as a banal domestic drama.
Tolstoy's uncompromisingly honest views had trapped him in a position from which there appeared no escape save the blind flight he ultimately undertook. I don't see that this view diminishes his greatness as a man; on the contrary, as I make plain in the book, 'these were the true reasons for his departure', and reveal an almost superhuman integrity.
It was to emphasise this aspect of the tragedy that I deliberately avoided describing the pathetic scenes at Astapovo in the 'prodigious' or bombastic manner recommended, preferring a low-key and in part ironical approach.
Nikolai Tolstoy
Court Close, Sou thmoor, Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Previous page
