2. Affective character of the personality ("epileptic character")
Already in adolescence, we can note the development of increased affectivity in Tolstoy’s character. Hot temper, sensitivity, lability of moods, tearfulness - traits that already from childhood, and then in adolescence, clearly appear in his behavior. For example, in “Boyhood” we have a description of such an outburst of affectivity with aggressive actions during a quarrel with an older brother (p. 161, chapter V). The same outbursts of affectivity are described. further in chapters XI - XVI. Here we see an increase in affect under the influence of a number of childhood failures. The one he received for a poorly learned lesson, Mimi’s threat to complain to her grandmother that he appeared on the stairs where he was not supposed to appear, the broken key from his father’s briefcase and, finally, the resentment that Sonechka chose another boy in games rather than him. All these failures caused a violent reaction in his psyche - a clash with his tutor. In a state of passion, he loses self-control, becomes aggressive and impulsive. "I wanted to get rowdy and do some brave thing," says Tolstoy." "The blood rushed to my heart with extraordinary force, I felt how hard it was beating, how the color was draining from my face and how my heart was shaking completely involuntarily. lips. I had to be scared at that moment because St. Jerome, avoiding my gaze, quickly approached me and grabbed my hand; but as soon as I felt the touch of his hand, I felt so bad that I, unconscious of anger, pulled my hand out and, with all my childish strength, hit him.
What's happening to you? Volodya said, approaching me, seeing my action with horror and surprise.
Leave me,” I shouted at him through tears, “no one loves me, you don’t understand how unhappy I am!” “You are all disgusting, disgusting,” I added with some kind of frenzy, addressing the whole society.
But at this time St. Jerome, with a determined and pale face, approached me again. and before I had time to prepare for defense, he, with a strong movement, like a vice, squeezed both my hands and dragged me somewhere. My head was spinning with excitement; I only remember that I was desperately beating my head and knees until then. while I still had strength; I remember that my nose bumped into someone’s thighs several times, that someone’s coat fell into my mouth, that around me on all sides I heard the presence of someone’s feet, the smell of dust and the violette with which St. Jerome.
Five minutes later the closet door closed behind me...
Having spent the night in a dark closet as punishment, the next day he was brought to his grandmother with that. to plead guilty, but instead his passion erupted into a convulsive fit.
Apparently, these attacks of pathological affect with all its consequences were not isolated during his adolescence, for Tolstoy, with a heavy feeling and with reluctance, dwells on the memories of his adolescence. In chapter XX he says:
“Yes, the further I move in describing this period of my life, the more heavier and it becomes more difficult (our detente) for me. Rarely, rarely, between memories during this time, do I find moments of true warm feeling that so brightly and constantly illuminated the beginning of my life. I involuntarily want to quickly run through the desert of adolescence and reach that happy Time when again a truly tender, noble feeling of friendship illuminated the end of this age with a bright light, and marked the beginning of a new time of youth, full of charm and poetry.”
From this we can conclude that the period of adolescence was the most difficult for him in terms of the development of an epileptic character. And only youth begins with brighter memories. Apparently, in youth, the above-mentioned pathological attacks decrease sharply. There's more. Of course, this does not mean that the epileptoid character of the psyche has stopped in its development.
Tolstoy's pathological character is best reflected in the reactions of his behavior when he finds himself in any environment, no matter what: one close to him in class status, or alien to him.
When Tolstoy finds himself among fellow students, the abnormality of his behavior immediately affects him. In Chapter XXXVI of “Youth” he talks about it this way: “Everywhere I felt the connection connecting this young society, but with sadness I felt that this connection somehow passed me by, but it was only a momentary impression. As a result of it and the annoyance generated by it; on the contrary, I even soon found that it was very good that I did not belong to this whole society, that I should have my own circle of decent people and sat down on the 3rd bench, where Count B., Baron Z., Prince R. sat. , Ivin and other gentlemen of the same kind, of whom I knew Ivin and the count. But these gentlemen looked at me in such a way that I felt that I did not belong to their society.”
Consequently, he could not get along even with young people from his own environment, despite the fact that he wanted this. The reason here lies precisely in his abnormal character, in his arrogance, in his inability to naturally behave, for he behaves “like Lermontov” with everyone (let us also remember Lermontov’s behavior among students).
“At the next lectures (he continues) I no longer felt so much loneliness, I met many people, shook hands, talked, but for some reason there was no real rapprochement between me and my comrades, and I still often felt sad in my soul and I couldn’t get along with the company of Ivin and the aristocrats, as everyone called them. Because, as I remember now, I was wild and rude to them and bowed to them only when they bowed to me, and they did very little, apparently. needed my acquaintance."
Thus, it can be said about him that he “left behind his own people and did not stick to others,” he simply was not able to adapt to any environment. The only attempt to get along with one student (a government-funded student at Operov) who was not from his midst soon ended in an outbreak of a quarrel.
He also looked down on professors and their lectures, unseriously for an inquisitive and capable young man.
... "I remember that I extended my satirical gaze to the professor as well."...
Contrary to the generally accepted practice of students recording lectures, he decides differently: “At the same lecture, having decided that writing down everything that every professor would say was not necessary and would even be stupid, I adhered to this rule until the end of the course.”
Caused by his painful reaction of behavior, isolation, angularity, arrogance, unnatural arrogance with its comme il faut and “demonic pose”, eccentricities, sharply attracted the attention of those around him.
Persons who observed Tolstoy as a student characterize him in this way:
“... there was always some strange angularity and shyness observed in him (N.N. Zagoskin, Historical Bulletin, 1894, January).
“Occasionally, I also attended lessons, avoiding the count, who from the first repelled me with his feigned coldness, bristly hair and the contemptuous expression of his narrowed eyes. For the first time in my life, I met a young man filled with such a strange and incomprehensible to me importance and exaggerated self-satisfaction ".
"... his comrades apparently treated him like a big eccentric." (V. Nazarov, Historical Bulletin, 1890, No11). Then, later, when he gave up his studies and entered military service as a cadet, his personality and character became more and more unstable.
His very departure to the Caucasus, apparently, was caused by some kind of neuropsychic crisis, for upon arrival in the Caucasus he began to be treated with iron baths and to Ergolskaya on June 5, he writes like this: “I arrived alive and well, but a little sad , by the end of May to Staro-Gladkovskaya.
"... I take iron baths and no longer feel pain in my legs. I have always had rheumatism, but during our journey on the water, I think I caught a cold. Rarely have I felt so well as now and, despite the heat is intense, I do a lot of movement." However, this good state of health apparently changed for him. In his diary dated March 20, 1852, he writes: “since November I was treated, sat for two whole months, that is, until the New Year at home: I spent this time, although it was boring, but calmly and useful. I spent January partly on the road, partly in Starogladkovskaya, writing, finishing the first part 1, preparing for the campaign and was calm and good.
And on May 30, 1852, he writes to Ergolskaya: “I would have been completely satisfied with these two months if I had not been ill. But in general, every cloud has a silver lining, my illness gave me an excuse to go to Pyatigorsk for the summer, from where I am writing to you I have been here for 2 weeks and lead a very regular and secluded lifestyle, thanks to which I am happy with both my health and my behavior. I get up at 4 o’clock to go drink water, which continues until 6 o’clock, I take a bath. and I return home... every cloud has a silver lining - when I'm unwell I write more assiduously another novel (our detente), which I began (from a letter to Ergolskaya dated October 20, 1852).
From these passages we see that Tolstoy during 1851 and 1852. complains of illness and is treated. In the letters we quoted here to Ergolskaya, he always notes that he is “calm.” Apparently, before this he was in a state of excitement. Consequently, we have reason to think that he was attracted to the Caucasus for the treatment of nerves, in addition to serving in the army. And it was hardly possible to explain military service at the front other than as one of the impulses of instability of the epileptoid psyche of the young Tolstoy.
Mental instability, lability, hot temper, mood swings, affectivity, oppositional mood, thoughtfulness, talkativeness, vanity and arrogance - the qualities that young Tolstoy showed in general, here in military service these properties did not make him fit for service at the front. His colleagues speak of him this way: ...he spoke well, fast, witty and captivated all listeners with conversations and disputes".
"... he was not proud, but approachable, lived like a good comrade with officers, but with his superiors was always in opposition .
“At times, Tolstoy would experience moments of sadness and melancholy: then he avoided our company. ... Sometimes Tolstoy disappeared somewhere and only then did we find out that he was on forays, as a volunteer, or lost at cards. And he repented to us in sins. Often Tolstoy gave his comrades a sheet of paper on which the final rhymes were sketched... We had to select the remaining, initial words for them. In the end, Tolstoy himself selected them. sometimes in a very obscene sense.
"In Sevastopol they began with Count Tolstoy eternal clashes with the authorities. He was a man for whom it meant a lot to fasten all the buttons and fasten the collar of his uniform. and the man did not recognize discipline and superiors.
“Any remark by a senior in rank evoked immediate insolence or a caustic, offensive joke on the part of Tolstoy. Since Count Tolstoy arrived from the Caucasus, the chief of staff of the entire artillery of Sevastopol, General Kryzhanovsky (later the governor-general) appointed him commander of a mountain battery.
“This appointment was a grave mistake, since Lev Nikolaevich not only had little idea about service, but was no good as a commander of a separate unit: he did not serve anywhere for a long time, he constantly wandered from unit to unit.
"... Here, while commanding a mountain battery, Tolstoy soon had first serious clash with superiors.
Tolstoy was a burden for battery commanders and therefore was always free from service: he could not be sent anywhere. He was not assigned to the trenches; he did not participate in the mine business. It seems that he did not have a single military order for Sevastopol, although he participated in many cases as a volunteer and was brave...
He liked to drink, but he was never drunk (relaxation is ours everywhere) (A.V. Zharkevich, from Odakhovsky’s memoirs about L.N. Tolstoy).
From this characteristic we see that Tolstoy’s excited, passionate, aggressive character during this period not only did not subside, but poc crescendo, for his departure from Sevastopol was apparently caused by his affective character and, in addition, upon his arrival in St. Petersburg his excitement and aggressiveness increased even more. Contemporaries speak about his stay in St. Petersburg in the following way:
“... During the hour I spent with Turgenev, we spoke in low voices, for fear of waking up the count who was sleeping outside the door.
“It’s like this all the time,” Turgenev said with a grin. He returned from Sevastopol from the battery, stopped at my place and went all out. Revelry, gypsies and cards (all night long); and then sleeps like the dead until two o'clock. I tried to hold him back, but now I waved my hand.
“On this same visit we met Tolstoy, but this acquaintance was completely formal, since at that time I had not yet read a single line of his and had not even heard of him as a literary name, although Turgenev talked about his stories from childhood. But from the first minute I noticed in the young Tolstoy. involuntary opposition to everything generally accepted in the area of judgment 2. During this short time, I only saw him once at Nekrasov’s in the evening in our single literary circle and witnessed the despair to which Turgenev, boiling and choking from an argument, reached Tolstoy’s apparently restrained, but all the more caustic objections.
"... Hiring a permanent residence in St. Petersburg was inexplicable for me; from the very first days, St. Petersburg not only became unattractive to him, but everything about St. Petersburg noticeably had an irritating effect on him. Having learned from him on the very day of the meeting that today he was invited to dine at the editorial office" Sovremennik", and, despite the fact that he had already published in this magazine, did not know anyone there closely, I agreed to go with him. On the way, I considered it necessary to warn him that he should not touch on certain issues there and mainly refrain from attacks on J. Sand, whom he strongly disliked, while at that time many of the members of the editorial board fanatically worshiped her. The dinner went well, but towards the end he could not stand it when he heard the praise for Z. Sand’s new novel. himself as a hater of hers, adding that the heroines of her novels, if they existed in reality, should, for the sake of edification, be tied to a shameful chariot and driven through the streets of St. Petersburg. He already then developed that peculiar view of women and women's issues, which later. expressed himself so vividly in the novel Anna Karenina. The scene in the editorial office could have been caused by his irritation against everything St. Petersburg, but most likely by his penchant for contradiction. Whatever opinion is expressed and the more authoritative the interlocutor seemed to him, the more persistently it encouraged him to express the opposite and begin to cut himself with words. Seeing how he listened, how he peered at his interlocutor from the depths of his gray, deeply hidden eyes, and how ironically his lips pursed, he seemed to be thinking in advance not a direct answer, but an opinion that was supposed to puzzle and strike his interlocutor with its surprise.
“This is how Tolstoy seemed to me in his youth. In disputes, he sometimes went to extremes. I was in the next room when an argument began between him and Turgenev; Hearing the screams, I went out to those arguing. Turgenev paced from corner to corner, showing all signs of extreme embarrassment; he took advantage of the open door and immediately disappeared. Tolstoy was lying on the sofa, but his excitement was so strong that it took a lot of effort to calm him down and take him home. The subject of the dispute still remains unfamiliar to me. This winter was the first and last that L.N. Tolstoy spent in St. Petersburg; but after waiting for spring, he left for Moscow and then settled in Yasnaya Polyana. (Discharge is ours everywhere G.S.). (D.V. Grigorovich).
“When Turgenev had just met Count Tolstoy, he said about him:
Not a single word, not a single movement in him is natural, He is always depicted in front of us, and I find it difficult to explain this stupid arrogance in an intelligent person with his seedy county.
“I didn’t notice this in Tolstoy,” Panaev objected.
Well, you don’t notice a lot of things,” Turgenev replied.
“After some time, Turgenev found that Tolstoy had a claim to Don Juanism. Once Count Tolstoy told some interesting episodes that happened to him during the war. When he left, Turgenev said:
Even if you boil a Russian officer in lye for three days, you won’t be able to boil him down into cadet bravado; No matter how you polish such a subject with the varnish of education, brutality still shines through in him.
“And Turgenev began to criticize every phrase of Count Tolstoy, the tone of his voice, the expression of his face and finished: “And all this atrocity, as you might think, is out of one desire to gain distinction” (Panaev). Even if we take into account some of Turgenev’s bias in his assessment Tolstoy's personality and behavior still catches the eye: contemporaries who encounter Tolstoy all unanimously note the extraordinary excitement and abnormality of his character during this period.
Apparently, this period of excitement of an epileptic nature was replaced by a period of depression, the decline of this excitement with “spleen, melancholy,” which he also complained about, or some other equivalent; he goes abroad, the main motive is treatment. He traveled several times (2 or 3 times) and, finally, in 1962, on the advice of doctors, he went to the Samara province for kumiss treatment.
Taking into account the statement of Tolstoy himself that at the age of 35 he experienced “real madness” (which he speaks about in “Notes of a Madman”) and taking into account that in the same year (i.e. 1862) he left to be treated with kumys and comparing all this, we have reason to assert that, apparently, this year he began to have those convulsive seizures that he had in childhood, and then began to develop more strongly: all the more so we have reason to assert that , in addition to diligent treatment, this period is distinguished by the decadence of his creativity. Criticism also noted this period as a period of decline, which will be discussed below. It is possible that this circumstance forced the acceleration of the planned marriage, which took place in the same year, i.e. in 1862.
However, family life, despite the seemingly “happy” beginning of married life, does not smooth out Tolstoy’s affective-aggressive character, on the contrary: it develops more and more. From the very beginning of his married life, Tolstoy quarrels with Sofia Andreevna, as he himself testifies to in Anna Karenina. Mentioning immediately after his marriage Levin’s disappointment in married life, he points to the spouses’ quarrels as one of the reasons for this disappointment.
"...Another disappointment and Charm there were quarrels. Levin could never imagine that there could be any other relationship between him and his wife other than tender, respectful, loving, and suddenly from the very first days they quarreled. These quarrels, like the first quarrel, were caused, according to Tolstoy himself, by all sorts of insignificant reasons and, of course, were explained not only by Tolstoy’s abnormal character, but also partly by Sofia Andreevna herself. Tolstoy himself speaks about this, and thus (p. 376 of Anna Karenina): “they made peace. She, realizing her guilt, but without expressing it, became more tender towards him, and they experienced a new, doubled happiness of love. But this did not prevent to ensure that these clashes do not recur and even especially often, for the most unexpected and insignificant reasons. These clashes often occurred because they didn’t yet know what was important to each other and because all this is the first time they were both often in a bad mood. When one was in a good mood and the other in a bad mood, the peace was not disturbed, but when both were in a bad mood, then the clashes occurred for reasons so incomprehensible, due to their insignificance, that they later could not remember what they were quarreling about. True, when they were both in a good mood, their joy in life doubled. But anyway it was a hard time for them at first. “During all this first time, a tension was especially vividly felt, as if twitching in one direction or another of the chain by which they were connected. In general, that honeymoon, that is, the month after the wedding, from which, according to legend, Levin was so looking forward a lot, was not only not honey, but remained in the memories of both of them the most difficult and humiliating time of their lives. They're both the same tried in later life erase from your memory everyone is ugly the shameful circumstances of these unhealthy times when both of them were rarely in a normal mood"... (Our detente is everywhere G.S.). This passage tells us a lot and explains a lot why Tolstoy’s married life could not give him what he expected. “Abnormal mood of spirit,” “shameful circumstances of this unhealthy time” in the first “honeymoon” of spouses who married for love, there is undoubtedly a fact that is striking. This is not an everyday trifle of everyday life if Tolstoy speaks of his “honeymoon” as if it were one. the most difficult and humiliating time their married life, which in later life had to be erased from memory as something ugly and painful. Here the thought involuntarily suggests itself that not only minor circumstances caused painful affective discharges in his psyche, but also abnormal sexual relations in the sexual life of both spouses. Otherwise, it is impossible to understand the harsh assessment of this time, and what Tolstoy meant in the words “shameful circumstances of this unhealthy time.” If only he meant only quarrels and his affective attacks, then, after all, these quarrels continued further and did not represent anything specific for a “honeymoon”. But since he talks about some “shameful circumstances of this unhealthy time”, as something specific to this time, which later somehow smoothed out, then there is no doubt that some specific sexual abnormalities played a role here, turning the “honeymoon” into something that heavy thing that forced, according to him, to erase everything from the spouses’ memory about this time.
However, the cause of these quarrels and affective attacks was not only Tolstoy’s abnormal character and his abnormal sexuality, but also the hysterical character of Sofia Andreevna. As you know, a hysterical character was noted at one time by doctors who were called during Sofia Andreevna’s attempt to throw herself into a pond with the aim of committing suicide. (See Goldenweiser's diary).
However, Tolstoy himself eloquently tells us about this. After his first quarrel with his wife, he says:
“It was only then for the first time that he clearly understood what he did not understand when, after the wedding, he took her to church. He realized that she was not only close to him, but that now he did not know where she ended and he began. He understood It was because of the painful feeling of duality that he experienced at that moment that he was offended at the first minute, but at that very second he felt that he could not be offended by her. that she was himself. At first he experienced a feeling similar to what a person experiences when, having suddenly received a strong blow from behind, with annoyance and a desire for revenge, he turns around to find the culprit and is convinced that it's himself I accidentally hit myself...
"... Like a man half asleep, languishing in pain, he wanted to tear off, throw away the sore spot from himself and, coming to his senses, he felt that he himself is the sore spot..." (Our detente).
In other words, Sofya Andreevna, as a person with a hysterical character, showed the same affectivity, irascibility, and sometimes grumpiness that were characteristic of him, therefore, her pathological character was, as it were, a reflection of his pathological character, hence his conclusion: " the sore spot is himself." He himself, on the one hand, is literally a “sore spot”, on the other hand, the pathological character of Sofia Andreevna - a reflection of his character - is also (in a figurative sense) a “sore spot” of his own character, but only in the person of another person .
Now we will move on to the question of the pathology of Tolstoy’s sexual life, which, in essence, was also the reason why his “honeymoon” was a difficult memory for the spouses.
That Tolstoy's sex life during his youth was abnormal, we know from his own assessment of his single life. He himself called this period a period of “gross promiscuity” and a period of sexual excesses. But still, we do not know what nature these excesses were, what is everyday and what is pathological in them.
The above excerpt from Anna Karenina already tells us something (which will be discussed below), but it tells us in more detail about the abnormalities of sexual life in the Kreutzer Sonata. The Kreutzer Sonata itself is a remarkable pathological document of the sexual life of an epileptoid. Such delving into the “dirty laundry” of one’s sexual experiences, such rapture and, one might say, ecstatic passion in exposing oneself and one’s sexual physiology to the extreme, is a trait of an epileptoid who finds pleasure in cynically exposing himself in the most unattractive light. Let us remember the same passion of Dostoevsky.
Unfortunately, we cannot dwell in detail on this document, which is most interesting for a psychopathologist, since we partially touch on this issue here.
So, we will present several excerpts from the “Kreutzer Sonata”, after which we will highlight the places we have emphasized in these excerpts.
“No matter how hard I tried to arrange a honeymoon for myself, nothing worked out. I felt disgusting, ashamed and boring all the time. But very soon it became even more painfully difficult. It started very soon. It seems that on the 3rd or 4th day I found my wife, bored, began to ask about what, began to hug her, which, in my opinion, was all she could want, but she took my hand away and cried. She didn’t know how to say it. But she was sad, it was probably hard. her frayed nerves told her the truth about the nastiness of our relations; but she didn't know how to say. I began to interrogate: she said something that she was sad without her mother. It seemed to me that this was not true. I began to persuade her, keeping silent about my mother. I didn’t understand that it was just hard for her, and her mother was just an excuse. But she was immediately offended that I kept silent about my mother, as if she didn’t believe her. She told me that I don't love her. I reproached her for being capricious, and suddenly her face changed completely, instead of sadness it expressed irritation, and she began to reproach me with the most poisonous words for selfishness and cruelty. I looked at her. Her whole face expressed complete coldness and hostility, almost hatred towards me. I remember how horrified I was when I saw this. How? What? I thought. Love is a union of souls, and this is what it is instead! It can’t be, but it’s not her!
I tried to soften it, but I came across such an insurmountable wall of cold, poisonous hostility that before I had time to look back, irritation took hold of me and we said a lot of unpleasant things to each other. The impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I called it a quarrel, but it was not a quarrel, it was only the discovery of the abyss that actually existed between us. Falling in love was exhausted by the satisfaction of sensuality, and we were left opposite each other in our real relationship to each other, that is, two egoists completely alien to each other, wanting to get as much pleasure as possible, one through the other. I called what happened between us a quarrel; but this was not a quarrel, but it was only a consequence of the cessation of sensuality, which revealed our real relationship to each other. I didn't realize it was cold and hostility was our normal attitude, did not understand this because this is a hostile attitude at first time very soon a newly rising distillation sensuality crept from us again, i.e. falling in love.
“And I thought that we had quarreled and made peace, and that this would never happen again. But on that first honeymoon, very soon a period of satiety set in again, again we stopped being tender to each other, and a quarrel occurred again. This second quarrel struck me even more painfully than the first. “So the first was not an accident, but this is how it should be and will be,” I thought, the second quarrel struck me all the more because it arose for the most impossible reason. it was because of money, which I never spared and certainly could not spare for my wife. I only remember that she somehow turned things around, that some remark of mine turned out to be an expression of my desire to rule over her through money, on. which I supposedly claimed was my own and exclusive right, something impossible, stupid, vile, unnatural for either me or her. I got irritated, began to reproach her for indelicacy, she me, and it went again in words. and in the expression of the face and eyes I saw again the same thing that had so amazed me before, cruel, cold hostility. With my brother, with my friends, with my father, I remember I quarreled but never between us there wasn’t that special, poisonous anger that was here. But some time passed, and again this mutual hatred was hidden under love, i.e. sensuality, and I consoled myself with the thought that these two quarrels were mistakes that could be corrected. But then the third, fourth quarrel came, and I I realized that this is not an accident, but that this is how it should be, this is how it will be, and I was horrified by what was before me. At the same time, I was also tormented by that terrible thought that I was the only one living so badly, unlike what I expected, with my wife, while this does not happen in other marriages. I didn’t know then that this is a common fate, but that everyone, just like me, thinks that this is their exclusive misfortune, they hide this exceptional, shameful misfortune not only from others, but from themselves, they do not admit it to themselves. this.
"... It started from the first days and continued all the time, growing stronger and more bitter. In the depths of my soul, from the very first weeks, I felt that I was lost, that what had turned out was not what I expected; that marriage was not only not happiness, but something very difficult, but I, like everyone else, did not want to admit it to myself (I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself even now if it weren’t for the end) and hid it not only from others, but also from myself. Now I’m surprised how I didn’t see my real self. situation. It could already be seen because the quarrels began from such reasons that it was impossible later, when they ended, to remember why reason did not have time to fake sufficient reasons for the constantly existing hostility to each other. But even more striking was the insufficiency. pretexts for reconciliation. Sometimes there were words, explanations, even tears, but sometimes... oh, it’s disgusting to remember now - after the most cruel words to each other, suddenly silent glances, smiles, kisses, hugs... Ew, abomination! How could I not see the nastiness of this then..."
“... After all, the main thing is rotten,” he began, “it is assumed in theory that love is something ideal, sublime, but in practice, love is something vile, swine, about which it is disgusting and shameful to talk and remember. It’s not for nothing but nature made it disgusting and shameful. And if it is disgusting and shameful, then it should be understood. And here, on the contrary, people pretend that the disgusting and shameful is beautiful and sublime. that I indulged in animal excesses not only not ashamed of them, but for some reason proud of the possibilities of these physical excesses, without thinking at all not only about her spiritual life, but even about her physical life. I I wondered where our bitterness towards each other came from..."
"... I was surprised at our hatred for each other. But it couldn’t be otherwise. This hatred was nothing more than the mutual hatred of accomplices in the crime - both for incitement and for participation in the crime."
Everything happened because there was a terrible abyss between us, which I told you about, then terrible tension of mutual hatred for each other, in which the first reason was enough to create a crisis. There have been quarrels between us lately something terrible and were especially striking, giving way to the same intense and animal passion."
"...I insist that all husbands who live as I lived must either prostitute themselves,or disperse; or kill themselves or their wives, as I did. If this has not happened to anyone, then this is a particularly rare exception. Before I finished, how I finished, I was several times on the verge of suicide, and she was also poisoned."
So, having read these passages in the “Kreutzer Sonata,” the thought involuntarily arises of what a nightmare sex life the spouses must have had if Tolstoy, through the mouth of the hero, comes to the conclusion: “all husbands who live the way I lived must either be dissolute... go kill yourself, or your wives,” And indeed, he was on the verge of suicide several times, and she also poisoned herself.” Is it possible to talk about domestic quarrels after this? It’s clear that here we are dealing with pronounced manifestations of pathological sexuality? .
What this pathology is here, we have a definite answer from Tolstoy: first of all, he repents of his hearth excesses, of his extremely increased Libido, but again this is not the point here. This is what distinguished him even in his single life. In his married life, this was not the essence of his spiritual tragedy. The point here is that this Libido was always preceded by specific excesses, he himself eloquently explains this to us. At first he is struck by “where did our embitterment towards each other come from, where did “that terrible tension of mutual hatred towards each other” come from, which became “something terrible” and was especially striking, giving way to the same intense animal passion... after the most cruel words to each other, suddenly silently, glances, smiles, kisses, hugs... Ugh, abomination! How could I not see all the nastiness of this then..." At first he did not understand that this was an unconscious manifestation of his sadistic sexuality. He thought it was just an ordinary quarrel. But then, when this began to manifest itself more and more often, he “realized that the hostile attitude was our normal attitude,” which “very soon” gave way to “distilled sensuality.” not understanding what was going on, on the 3rd or 4th day of the “honeymoon”, “with the most poisonous words, she began to reproach him for cruelty and selfishness.”
After this, Tolstoy’s explanation in Anna Karenina becomes clear to us (see the above quotes from the same place). “These clashes often occurred because they did not yet know what was important to each other” in sexual life, that is, they simply did not know how to adapt to each other sexually. Let us recall, by the way, right here that Tolstoy, speaking about the reasons for the disappointment in Levin’s married life, says: “Another disappointment and charm were quarrels,” that is, quarrels served both as a cause of disappointment and a reason for “charm”—excitement of Libido. All this gives us reason to talk about sadistic tendencies in Tolstoy’s sexual life.
In addition to pathological sexuality, the severity of the family situation was aggravated by pathological jealousy. This jealousy drove Tolstoy to such a delusional state that it made his life downright impossible. How did this complex of experiences develop? we have a wonderful confession in the same “Kreutzer Sonata”. Here are a few excerpts for illustration.
"... My wife, who herself wanted to feed and fed the next five children, became ill with the first child. These doctors, who cynically undressed and felt her everywhere, for which I had to thank them and pay them money - these doctors the dear ones found that she should not feed, and for the first time she was deprived of the only means that could save her from coquetry. The nurse fed, that is, we took advantage of the woman’s poverty, need and ignorance, lured her from the child to ours. for this they dressed her in a kokoshnik with braid. But this is not the point, that at this very time of her freedom from pregnancy and breastfeeding, the previously dormant, feminine coquetry manifested itself with particular force. And in me, accordingly, the torment of jealousy manifested itself with particular force., which, without ceasing, tormented me throughout my married life, just as they cannot help but torment all those spouses who live with their wives, how I lived, that is, immorally".
"... Throughout my married life I never stopped feeling the torment of jealousy. But there were times when I especially sharply suffered from this. And one of these periods was when, after her first child, doctors forbade her to breastfeed. I was especially jealous at this time, firstly, because my wife was experiencing that anxiety characteristic of a mother, which should cause an unreasonable disruption of the correct course of life; secondly, because, having seen how easily she discarded the moral obligation of a mother, I rightly, although unconsciously, concluded that it would be just as easy for her to discard her marital one, especially since she was completely healthy and, despite the prohibition dear doctors, fed the next children and fed them perfectly.”
"... But that’s not the point. I’m just saying that she fed the children very well herself, and that this Carrying and feeding children alone saved me from the pangs of jealousy. If not for this, everything would have happened earlier. The children saved me and her. At the age of eight she had five children. And she fed all but the first one herself."
From these already passages it is clear how nightmarish this jealousy was if the husband, out of fear of “female coquetry,” suppressed it consciously with continuous motherhood (pregnancy, feeding), because; according to his confession, “carrying and feeding children alone saved me from the pangs of jealousy.” Imagine his indignation when “those dear doctors” forbade her to feed the child, and thereby deprived him of peace. No wonder he despised doctors so much! His jealousy was monstrous and, as we will see below, reached the point of delusional ecstasy. This delusional ecstasy developed in him gradually and, apparently, manifested itself especially strongly during periods of twilight states. In The Kreutzer Sonata, he used this complex of experiences to show how this complex of twilight states can drive a person suffering from delusions of jealousy to murder and suicide (see below for more on this).
Coverage of Tolstoy's affective character would be incomplete if we did not give here reviews of his character from his children.
From the following excerpts from the memoirs of Lev Lvovich. son of Tolstoy, we can quite definitely imagine a picture of this affective-irritable psyche of Leo Tolstoy.
... "If he worked well, everything went well all day, everyone in the family was cheerful and happy - if not, that dark cloud covered our lives".
... "I remember that every evening the manager came to him, talked to him about business, and often my father was so angry that the poor manager did not know what to say and left, shaking his head."
(Memoirs of L.L. Tolstoy “The Truth about My Father” - Leningrad, 1924).
... "Almost every year Fet came to Yasnaya. My father was glad to see him. Fet spoke little and even somehow difficultly. Sometimes, before uttering a word, he hummed for a long time, which was funny for us children, but my father listened to him with keen interest, although it was rare, even almost never, without a quarrel between them". (Ibid., p. 30).
... "One day my father, in a fit of rage, shouted at him (the Swiss teacher).
"I'll throw you out of the window if you behave like that."
... "My father loved to teach mathematics lessons himself...
He gave us tasks and woe to us if we did not understand them. Then he got angry and shouted at us. His scream confused us, and we no longer understood anything.". (Ibid., p. 48).
"... Sometimes such an exception was the illness of children, misunderstandings with servants, or quarrels between parents, which have always been unpleasant to me".
... "I remember a rather serious quarrel between father and mother. I then reconciled them. What was the cause of the quarrel? I don’t know, maybe the father was dissatisfied with something that the mother said, maybe he was just angry with her, to give vent to your bad mood. He was very angry and shouted in his loud, unpleasant voice. Even as a child I had an aversion to this voice. The mother, crying, defended herself." (Ibid., p. 49).
... "I didn't like him when he quarreled with his mother". (Ibid., p. 86).
... "Serious, always thoughtful, always angry, and looking for new thoughts and definitions - this is how he lived among us, secluded with his enormous work."
(Description of the time of crisis. Ibid., p. 97).
... "Since childhood I have been accustomed to respect and fear of him". (Page 105).
From these son’s comments about his father, we definitely see the father’s affective character, so that “from childhood he was accustomed to the fear of him,” for the “serious, always thoughtful, always angry” father often quarreled. He quarreled with his wife, quarreled with friends, with the servants, and even at his children, he “got angry and shouted” so much that he evoked the following assessment from his son: “Woe to us if we did not understand them (that is, the tasks assigned to him).” .
By the way, Leo Tolstoy himself quite well characterized his affectively irritable nature with its transitions into sensitive tearfulness in one half-joking work called: “Sorrowful sheet of the mentally ill of the Yasnaya Polyana hospital” 3, where he gives the medical history of all the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana, in a humorous form . It must be said that this joke contains an apt description.
This “sorrowful sheet” begins with a characterization of one’s personality and thus:
No. 1. (Lev Nikolaevich). Sanguine character belongs to the peaceful section. The patient is obsessed with mania, called "Weltverbesserungs wahn" by German psychiatrists. The point of insanity is that the patient believes it is possible to change the lives of other people with words. General signs: dissatisfaction with the entire existing order, condemnation of everyone except oneself, and irritable garrulity, without paying attention to the listeners, frequent transitions from anger and irritability to unnatural tearful sensitivity.
Finally, in Notes of a Madman, Tolstoy directly points to affectivity as the basis of his morbid character:
"Today they took me to testify... and opinions were divided... They recognized me susceptible to affects and something else, but in your right mind." 4
And so, all this data definitely tells us about affective-irritable nature Leo Tolstoy, and undoubtedly his behavior was appropriately colored by this affectivity.
Notes
1. "Childhood".
2. Our detente (G.S.).
3. Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy, “My Memoirs” p. 67, ed. Ladyzhnikova. Berlin.
4. Detente is ours everywhere (G.S.)
How do you imagine Leo Tolstoy? What seems most important to you in his attitude towards himself and towards the people around him?
Leo Tolstoy lived a long and complex life, in which there were many turning points that changed the writer’s worldview and his aesthetic positions. The main thing in Tolstoy’s character was a constant search for truth, the meaning of human existence. This is present in the early stories “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”, and in the latest works of a philosophical nature, in which he affirms the idea of self-improvement and non-resistance to evil through violence. The struggle between good and evil constantly worried Tolstoy as a person and a writer.
There is a huge collection of portraits of Leo Tolstoy: he was painted, sculpted, sculpted, photographed. Which of the portraits you know, in your opinion, most accurately reproduces not only his appearance, but also the spiritual qualities of this unusual person?
The portrait of L. N. Tolstoy by I. N. Kramskoy from 1873 is memorable. The writer is 45 years old. He is already the renowned author of Sevastopol Stories, an autobiographical trilogy, and the novel War and Peace, and a permanent resident of Yasnaya Polyana. The artist perfectly conveys the intensity of Tolstoy’s thoughts, sharp gaze, and internal energy. Lev Nikolaevich is depicted in a loose shirt, called a “sweatshirt”.
In the last years of the writer’s life, Ilya Repin painted him many times. He created portraits and narrative paintings that showed the old Tolstoy in action, in movement. Among them, the painting “Tolstoy on arable land” is especially popular. What do you think is the reason for such popularity?
At the time when the portrait was painted, Tolstoy preached the idea of simplification, approaching peasant labor and rural life. Tolstoy sought to learn from the people their wisdom and comprehend their philosophy. In addition, Repin’s skill made it possible to convey not only the writer’s clothes and his occupation of work unusual for a nobleman, but also the movement of his thoughts, the state of spirituality at the moment of introduction to peasant labor.
How do you evaluate Leo Tolstoy as a reader, since you are familiar with the lists of works he has read and highly rated? Do you think Tolstoy would have included in these lists those works that he did not like at all, or did he not name them simply because the books that he did not like did not remain in his memory?
Returning to the words of John Amos Comenius, Tolstoy showed here such an important skill of the reader as the ability to choose a book. It is precisely because of their moral influence on the formation of a young person that books were included in this list. Here are the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel), works of Russian and world classics, especially A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev. He did not set himself the task of adding to this list all the books he read that he liked or did not like; he included works that shocked him spiritually and influenced his moral beliefs.
Composition
How do you imagine Leo Tolstoy? What seems most important to you in his attitude towards himself and towards the people around him?
Leo Tolstoy lived a long and complex life, in which there were many turning points that changed the writer’s worldview and his aesthetic positions. The main thing in Tolstoy’s character was a constant search for truth, the meaning of human existence. This is present in the early stories “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”, and in the latest works of a philosophical nature, in which he affirms the idea of self-improvement and non-resistance to evil through violence. The struggle between good and evil constantly worried Tolstoy as a person and a writer.
There is a huge collection of portraits of Leo Tolstoy: he was painted, sculpted, sculpted, photographed. Which of the portraits you know, in your opinion, most accurately reproduces not only his appearance, but also the spiritual qualities of this unusual person?
The portrait of L. N. Tolstoy by I. N. Kramskoy from 1873 is memorable. The writer is 45 years old. He is already the renowned author of Sevastopol Stories, an autobiographical trilogy, and the novel War and Peace, and a permanent resident of Yasnaya Polyana. The artist perfectly conveys the intensity of Tolstoy’s thoughts, sharp gaze, and internal energy. Lev Nikolaevich is depicted in a loose shirt, called a “sweatshirt”.
In the last years of the writer’s life, Ilya Repin painted him many times. He created portraits and narrative paintings that showed the old Tolstoy in action, in movement. Among them, the painting “Tolstoy on arable land” is especially popular. What do you think is the reason for such popularity?
At the time when the portrait was painted, Tolstoy preached the idea of simplification, approaching peasant labor and rural life. Tolstoy sought to learn from the people their wisdom and comprehend their philosophy. In addition, Repin’s skill made it possible to convey not only the writer’s clothes and his occupation of work unusual for a nobleman, but also the movement of his thoughts, the state of spirituality at the moment of introduction to peasant labor.
How do you evaluate Leo Tolstoy as a reader, since you are familiar with the lists of works he has read and highly rated? Do you think Tolstoy would have included in these lists those works that he did not like at all, or did he not name them simply because the books that he did not like did not remain in his memory?
Returning to the words of John Amos Comenius, Tolstoy showed here such an important skill of the reader as the ability to choose a book. It is precisely because of their moral influence on the formation of a young person that books were included in this list. Here are the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel), works of Russian and world classics, especially A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, I. S. Turgenev. He did not set himself the task of adding to this list all the books he read that he liked or did not like; he included works that shocked him spiritually and influenced his moral beliefs.
At the moment, anthropologists are interested in ideas about man in different eras. Lev Nikolaevich, the great Russian writer and thinker of the twentieth century, paid considerable attention to the essence of man. Views on ideas about a person are ambiguous.
Some researchers believe that Lev Nikolaevich’s man is characterized by hypertrophied individualism. Others believe that Tolstoy denied the concept of “personality,” arguing for the “drowning of personality” in a person.
Such ambiguity of views on Tolstoy’s ideas about man is due to the lack of a unified concept for the thinker’s study of this issue and its presentation. In this work, we will consider the anthropological ideas of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy based on the relationship between the key categories of the thinker’s idea of man.
The main feature of a person, according to Tolstoy, is continuous self-improvement. The fundamental task for a person is “self-identification”. When forming one’s own “I,” there is a confrontation between the spirit (inner “I”) and the body (external “I”). Tolstoy was convinced that man is a dual being, possessing consciousness and reason. The first is aimed at the “spiritual”, inside a person. It is a person’s awareness of his own imperfection that awakens consciousness.
Consciousness - “look at oneself”, “contemplation of the contemplator”. The mind is aimed at comprehending the laws of the surrounding reality. Tolstoy called the unity of the carnal and spiritual the unity of opposites. By the spiritual principle in a person, Lev Nikolayevich understood the consciousness of one’s own freedom, uniting an individual person with other people and thus overcoming spatial and temporal “limitations”, contributing to a person’s involvement in Everything.
The bodily principle in a person contributes to the isolation of individual existence, which is dependent on the laws of the external world. Lev Nikolaevich took the position that life reveals itself differently for a person who recognizes himself as a “physical” being and for a person who recognizes himself as a “spiritual” being. The existence of a “corporeal” being is a path to destruction, since human flesh is mortal.
The existence of a “spiritual” being goes beyond time and space. According to Tolstoy, in the process of self-improvement, a person must move from the “physical” to the “spiritual” self. The sequence of stages on the path to the “spiritual” “I” is determined as follows: 1) awareness of one’s separation from everything else, i.e. your body, 2) consciousness of what is separate, i.e. your soul, the spiritual basis of life, 3) the consciousness of why this spiritual basis of life is separated, i.e. consciousness of God." Some researchers emphasize that Tolstoy, while affirming such a three-level model, denies the two-level model of self-consciousness. In fact, the third level combines the first two, eliminating the individual principle. Lev Nikolaevich does not identify human essence with the concept of “personality”. The thinker has a negative attitude towards this concept.
Tolstoy believes that personality as an empirical “I” impoverishes a person, narrows his horizons to personal good. And it is the consciousness of the individual that takes a person beyond the perception of reality, carries out the transition of the “I” from the individual to the timeless, universal. The center of development of a spiritual being, according to Tolstoy, is rational consciousness. It separates itself from the “animal personality”, clearly differentiating the universal (true) and the personal (false) in man. Tolstoy’s “impersonalism” is interpreted by researchers as the ultimate “equation of everyone and everything.” It is a fundamental condition for the knowledge of life, its spiritual and moral transformation, since “impersonalism” ensures the unity of criteria for the moral assessment of life. Tolstoy argues that “the confusion of personality, individuality with rational consciousness” leads to the erroneous conclusion that life and benefits for an individual are impossible.
As a result, the mind generates an incorrect analogy that is transferred to life in general. The elimination of such a delusion gives the “reasonable consciousness” the opportunity to discover that the equivalent of the true “I” in a person is the “desire for the good of oneself” or the “desire for the good of everything that exists,” which is the source of life for everything that exists, is recognized as the divine principle manifested through Love (as the gospel wisdom says, “God is love”). Thus, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that “the only salvation from the despair of life is the removal of one’s “I” from oneself” or “the recognition of others as oneself,” freeing the human being from “personal superstition.”
At the same time, direct renunciation of one’s own “I” (self-denial) is a necessary condition for expanding spiritual consciousness. Self-denial, according to Tolstoy, is associated with contradiction. On the one hand, what is required is not renunciation of personality, but its subordination to rational consciousness. On the other hand, Tolstoy argues as follows: “a person who renounces his personality is powerful, because his personality hid God in him.” It should be noted that self-denial does not mean the physical destruction of the “animal personality.” This term implies the elimination of the egocentrism of the empirical personality.
Moving from lower to higher consciousness, a person feels more and more free, since freedom is liberation from the deception of the individual. However, one should not assume that such freedom is identical to arbitrariness. Such liberation implies the humility of the human will, its subordination to the will of God, even to the point of merging with it. The hierarchy of degrees of human freedom, according to Tolstoy, is as follows: 1) at the lowest level, a person is submissive only to himself, but not to people and God, 2) at a higher level, he is submissive to people (human laws, subordinating his will to them), but not to God , 3) at the highest - he is submissive to God. “Humility before people is a low quality, because you are not submissive to yourself and to God.
Humility before God is the highest quality, because by submitting to God, you stand above the demands of your own personality and people.” Tolstoy spoke about the inadmissibility of violence as a means of “arranging” the lives of other people, i.e. a way to resolve contradictions between them and the principle of organizing their joint existence. The will of God in this also cannot act as external, i.e. suppressing the freedom of other wills, since God is not a Person. “It cannot be said that serving God is the purpose of life,” argues Tolstoy. - The purpose of a person’s life is and will always be his good. But since God wanted to give good to people, then people, achieving their good, do what God wants from them, fulfill His will.”
Tolstoy came to the definition that “man is God, but not in an absolute way” (Nikolai Kuzansky). Tolstoy removes all restrictions from this identity, directly asserting that man is not a “second” God or a reduced copy of the Divine for individual use, but an embodiment of universal spiritual boundlessness and unity commensurate with the scale of the Whole. Consequently, “We cannot know God as a person,” and in order to discover God within ourselves, i.e. to establish that “He and I are one and the same,” must abolish their “separate Personality, to completely renounce oneself means to become God,” Tolstoy summarizes.
Tolstoy's anthropological reasoning is subject to religious and historical-philosophical influence. The result of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s thoughts about man: the highest authenticity of human existence is achieved only through the loss of identity and subjectivity of a separate “I”. Such existence is the sought-after equivalent of immortality. Tolstoy calls it “true life.”
List of used literature:
1. Belyaev D.A., Sinitsyna U.P. L.N. Tolstoy in the context of Russian Nietzscheanism: criticism of the “philosophy of bestiality” and “superhuman aestheticism” // Historical, philosophical, political and legal sciences, cultural studies and art history. Questions of theory and practice. Tambov. 2015. No. 11-2 (61). pp. 46-49.
2. Berdyaev N.A. The Old and New Testaments in the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy // Berdyaev N. Philosophy of creativity, culture and art. T. 2. M.: Publishing house “Art”; ICHP "LIGA", 1994. pp. 461-482.
3. Berdyaev N.A. Spirits of the Russian Revolution // Literary studies. 1990. No. 2. P. 123-140.
4. Zenkovsky V.V. History of Russian philosophy. T. 1. Part 2. L.: EGO, 1991. P. 195-208.
5. Ilyin V.N. Return of Leo Tolstoy to the Church // Ilyin V.N. Worldview of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2000. pp. 352-360.
6. Tolstoy L.N. About life // Tolstoy L.N. Selected philosophical works / comp., author. entry Art. N.P. Semykin. M.: Education, 1992. pp. 421-526.
7. Tolstoy L.N. The path of life / Comp., commentary. A.N. Nikolyukina. M.: Higher. school, 1993. 527 p.
8. Tolstoy L.N. Philosophical diary. 1901-1910 / comp., entry. Art. and comment. A.N. Nikolyukina. M.: Izvestia, 2003. 543 p.
9. Tolstoy L.N. Christian teaching // Tolstoy L.N. Selected philosophical works / comp., author. entry Art. N.P. Semykin. M.: Education, 1992. P. 49-111.
10. Repin D.A., Yurkov S.E. The concept of internal experience in the metaphysical thought of Russian personalists // News of Tula State University. Humanitarian sciences. Vol. 3. Part 1. Tula: Tula State University Publishing House, 2013. P. 40-48. D.A.Belyaev, M.I.Babiy, 2017
