Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy: A discussion of the book by Anne Edwards

I recently read Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy by Anne Edwards and I'm going to do something I want to do more often, which is instead of just collecting quotes or ideas from books I read and storing them where I may or may not ever use it, I decided to make a post about it. This is not a review as much as some things I found interesting in the book. I also am not necessarily hitting the important biographical moments of the Tolstoys or trying to conduct a summary of any kind, but there were a few threads that I thought were spending some time on.

Edwards quotes the section in War and Peace where the Rostovs' house is full of young, happy, and marriageable women (Book Four, Chapter 10 in Maude or Chapter 76 overall in my count if you are looking for the chapter on the blog), making that comparison to the Behrs household when Leo Tolstoy visited and courted Sonya.

"Dr. Behrs too sensed that his household had changed. His three daughters were growing up, and they had become much too aware of themselves as female. It was his middle daughter, Sonya Andreyevna, who made the German Dr. Behrs the most uneasy...she was at times a dreamer, and at other times so full of life that her unladylike laughter rang through the house."

The book highlights throughout that Natasha in War and Peace is much less Sonya (later Countess Tolstoy) than her sister Tanya, but this description reminds one of the very early chapters of War and Peace, with Natasha's perceived, but accepted, inappropriate behavior as a pre-teen moving into a teenager, especially with her introductory episode with the doll Mimi. Considering Tolstoy's dislike for Germans in his writings, the Germanness of the Behrs (not to mention that the elder Behrs was a doctor, a vocation that appears in his work as not only fruitless, but downright dangerous and dishonest) is extremely interesting and that dynamic is something that I think could be readily explored further. There is a serious comparison to be made with Pierre and his early interactions with Natasha in the novel, with the age difference and Natasha being a child, which may make the modern reader uneasy. It isn't hard to see much of the tumultuousness of the marriage between Sonya and Leo founded on this age difference (Sonya's sexual peak seemingly coming "late" in life, which coincided with Leo's most anti-sexual periods, is something explored in the book as well), which creates a power difference (the fame difference, especially when Leo gained followers that lived around him, also created a power difference that severely affected their marriage) that lead to control and the resentment as a reaction, burgeoning in a rocky relationship. This is particularly highlighted by the fact that Sonya was eleven-years-old when Tolstoy met her.

"like the Rostovs in Tolstoy's future masterpiece, War and Peace, the young people in the Behrs household had begun to show "a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of happiness." And between a worldly Count and a high-strung eleven-year-old girl a historic meeting had taken place."

And just like Natasha, "Sonya was also rather moody and inclined to spells of fancifulness." This is perhaps true of virtually every woman of that age and I don't think is indicative of how Edwards portrays the more mature Sonya later in the book, but in something that resembles Family Happiness and Andrei in War and Peace:

"The images of what she had seen and imagined would warm Sonya during the hard, cold winter. Her fanciful musings were not confined, however, to the glories of the coronation; the memory of Polivanov's handsome, glowing profile gave her an unfamiliar, disturbingly sensual delight. But there was one element in her day-dreams about Poivanov that she had found increasingly puzzling. Whenever she envisaged the young cadet, she felt Count Tolstoy's shadowy presence in her thoughts."

Winter and the worship of a man, who turns out to be faraway, while a more intimate friend staying in the background of the narrative and then emerging as the true love and then it not ending exactly happy is simultaneously the plot of Family Happiness and the Andrei/Natasha plot of War and Peace (though without the "happy" resolution of the latter). And a lot of this itself stems from Tolstoy's sexism, which Edwards does not shy away from:

"She had lived in the shadow of Tolstoy, she realized with rancor, because her husband, fanatical in his belief that all men were equal, never extended his humanity to include women."

And that appears in the prologue, which I think colors the entire book, which is overall more sympathetic to Sonya than it is Leo, not without reason, as the following quote shows:

"Tolstoy enjoyed folk stories, and at this time he was especially taken by the tale of a Hindu who had dedicated his life to seeking truth and had become a prophet. His neglected wife found him standing on the bank of a sacred river. Falling to the dirt and kissing the hem of his priestly robes, she cried, "Master, I know that you have renounced the life of the flesh and have attained a higher stage of wisdom. What do you command me to do?"
"Disappear from my path, forever," he answered. Silently the wife rose, walked into the river, and sank from sight. Water lilies and lotuses swept over the spot, as though to mark her watery grave, while the widower stood by impassively and watched."

This almost proto-Beat-mysticism parable plays into a lot of the aggressive misogynist late 19th century thought that sees women as standing in the way of spiritual/intellectual development (it is not without significance that Edwards makes allusion repeatedly to Tolstoy's reading of Schopenhauer). Speaking of, Edwards connects the death of Aunt Pelagya (the same name as the old widow the Rostovs visit with their costumes during Christmas) with Tolstoy's obsession with death in later work.
The matching of Tolstoy's and Dmitry's deaths in the prologue recalls the bedside death scenes in War and Peace while Leo's affair with the older Obolensky draws up thoughts of Anna Karenina (with the similar named Oblonsky) and Resurrection. The feeling of finding a wife to feel more moral also feels similar to one of Neklyudov's early motivations.

Edwards sets up a lot of chapters with political background, including information about the tsars, and I really like how this political context, which the Tolstoys are of course intertwined with, serves as framing devices for the information about the main subjects of the book. However, the most instructive bits of political background are the ones that have direct parallels to episodes in Tolstoy's fiction. Take for example, the following quote from and about Alexander II's emancipation of the serfs:

"I expect sacrifices from the nobility...the loyal nobility will gather around the throne."...The manifesto was a complex document, and the peasants who had heard it read did not fully understand it."

Alexander II expects the same rapture that Alexander I received in War and Peace with the invasion of the French looming, prompting the nobility to promise everything (the difference in War and Peace is that Alexander doesn't really have to make such a speech, sending administrators in ahead of time, making his entrance met with this immediate rapture he desired). The manifesto being something that the peasants couldn't understand is not only owing to the detrimental class and education aspects of the Russian system, but reflecting Tolstoy's own experiences and what we see in Pierre's episode in War and Peace where he cannot communicate with and thus cannot free his serfs. 

When we get to Alexander III, we are able to see what is mentioned in Chapter 3 of Resurrection: 

"Alexander III and his old tutor Konstantin Pobedonostsev had catapulted Russia into one of its most reactionary periods. Basic rights--among them freedom of the press and of public assembly--were abrogated. Spies and agents provocateurs flourished. The government relied on the force of the Cossacks and the police to carry out its policies. And those who rejected Orthodoxy or who called for a constitution were considered dangerous and frequently treated as malefactors."

Tolstoy and his family would find themselves on the wrong side of this reactionary period, but it is also the backdrop for much of Tolstoy's radical thought at the end of the century, and with Nicholas II following, it isn't difficult to see why Tolstoy would have such a distrust of government and would see it as something that is fundamentally, and by definition, slavery and oppression. However, Edwards really tries to track the development of attitude and thought in Tolstoy, recounting an episode from around the time that Tolstoy was working on War and Peace.

"Tolstoy's arm did not mend as quickly as he had hoped, and the bone-chilling weather that set in soon after he arrived home made his recovery slow and painful. He seemed, as well, to have forgotten his social ideas, for he wrote a sharp letter to the governor of the Tula district demanding that action be taken against the peasants who were stealing his livestock and stored grain and hay. And on an overnight tour of his properties he wrote to Sonya telling her that he had stayed the night "in the hut of a dear Russian peasant," and remarking, "What swine and sluts they are!"

This behavior of using the police against the peasants is exactly the kind of episode that Tolstoy recounts in the late parts of The Kingdom of God is Within You and the reflections at the end of the quote about the way peasants live do not match what we see in War and Peace or Anna Karenina, which sees the peasants as heroic, foretelling Tolstoy's later desire (much to the chagrin of his wife) to leave the noble class and join the peasants.

"Most of these peasants could not read his writings, and they did not know the political, economic, and religious theories his group of followers, who called themselves Tolstoyans, espoused. His growing fame as the prophet of a new social order, which was making him a national figure of great importance and the Tsar's rival, was based mainly on his wearing peasant dress, dispensing rubles, and working in the fields with his former serfs. To the millions of inarticulate, uneducated, and impoverished Russian peasants who bore the yoke of a ruthless autocracy and a soulless bureaucracy, he appeared to be the one nobleman who stood with them against their former masters."

Unlike words, which typically demonstrates the ultimate divide between the peasant and noble class, the actions, or at least the appearance of actions, is what bridged the gaps between Tolstoy and the peasants he once saw as a life he could not originally connect with. This may be the ultimate disconnect that Tolstoy has with reformers like Speransky, who claim to work for making the lives of peasants better, but did not live with them. Tolstoy, at his best, wrote at an intellectual level that argued for the freedom of the lower classes while simultaneously living them. However, especially while writing War and Peace, Tolstoy wasn't always at his best.

"The war Sonya was referring to was a revolutionary movement in Russian-held Poland which had erupted into a bloody uprising. The Tsar had sent in troops, and Tolstoy had impulsively spoken of donning his uniform again. The insurrection failed, and despite Sonya's fears he did not desert his family "to gallop across the battlefield and revel in the romance of war and listen to the whistling of bullets to die in a foreign land."

This is why all the heroism of the soldiers in War and Peace is not inherently ironic in Tolstoy's view and why the Polish, when they are portrayed in the novel, aren't necessarily portrayed as entirely sympathetic. Poland, for much of its history and especially at this time, was at the mercy of Russian imperialism, the oppression of the empire, and for Tolstoy to contemplate, even for a second, joining the tsar's troops shows how much removed we are from The Kingdom of God is Within You or Bethink Yourselves or at least how Tolstoy was still obsessed with military life.

"The only one of Sonya's sons to see service in the Russo-Japanese War was Andreyusha...When the war broke out, he was in love with a married woman, and to his father's disgust and his mother's consternation, he decided to extricate himself from difficulties by enlisting in the army...But before he saw action, Andrey suffered a nervous collapse and was discharged. Refusing to return to his wife and children, he set up a bachelor household, with Timofei, his bastard half-brother, serving as his coachman. This difficult son continued to bring grief to the Tolstoys, and after the way they were horrified when he became a member of the Black Hundred, a right wing anti-Semitic group which engaged in terrorist activities against members of minority and oppressed classes. From 1900 there is no mention or record of Timofei, who would have been forty-three at the time."

And this didn't change from generation to generation, with the war that caused Bethink Yourselves having one of his sons (engaged in Anatole-like behavior) that shares the name of one of his main characters from War and Peace not only participate in but to follow it up with right-wing terrorism. That a prominent political writer and celebrity had a son that followed in the opposite footsteps is not only not surprising but something that one has to ponder whether or not the path that Andrey followed was one that Leo, Nikolai, or Dmitry could have followed. But for War and Peace itself, it is well-documented how much Sonya contributed to its completion, but her whole family played a role in the novel as well.

"Everyone in the Behrs family was involved in Tolstoy's new project. Dr. Behrs put together batches of references to source material on Napoleon's invasion. Even Lisa answered an urgent request for aid. She had read a great deal about that period of history and sent him a lengthy bibliography as well as detailed and meticulously annotated answers to questions. Once he began writing, Sonya took on the task of making a fair copy of his nearly illegible manuscript. At first the story confused her; she could make no sense of "all those conversations...between Countess So-and-So and Princess So-and-So."'

Confusion over the characters and politics of War and Peace doesn't just happen to modern readers but happened to those close to the novel as well. However, the thoughts of Sonya's father on Tolstoy's writings are very informative for me as well, with him once saying, "Your Lyova wrote such a fantastic piece for Tanya that even a German would never have thought of it." This "even a German" language is used a few times in War and Peace and is extremely interesting coming from a German person themselves. However, Behrs wasn't always positive, and his problems that he had with Tolstoy's work are rather revealing.

"Dr. Behrs did not, however, regard Tolstoy's literary work with unqualified approval. The Cossacks had been published in Moscow in February to quite good reviews, but the doctor believed that the novel, although well written, was seriously flawed by the inclusion of scandalous autobiographical episodes. He felt that these "indecent incidents" were the reason for the book's poor sales. "For certainly," he declared, "young girls should not be allowed to read the book!" He also found its length--two hundred pages--"discouraging."'

Finding The Cossacks' length discouraging is of course extremely entertaining and ironic considering the length of Tolstoy's most well-known two fiction works. One of the biggest running threads of the book that I found compelling was not only Tolstoy's use of his own experiences in his books, but more importantly, the reaction of those around him to his use of familiar experiences to his work. In the quote below, we see the inspiration for the scene in War and Peace where Natasha and her family prepare for the ball.

"Tanya rose at eight the morning of the gala event and was in a fever of excitement all day. Her filmy white gown with its deep neckline was almost ready; Sonya was just finishing the last of the dozens of pink silk rosebuds she had embroidered on the dress. Sonya subscribed to the French fashion magazines, and she sat her sister before a mirror and, with Dunyasha's help and many pins and ribbons, copied a most flattering ball hairdo. When Tanya left the house with Lev Nikolaevich, himself splendid in a black silk dress jacket, she looked every inch a beauty, from her delicate satin dancing slippers to the pink silk rose pinned in her black hair. She ran back to hug her sister and then was gone, her cries and laughter echoing behind her."

Just as Pierre constantly finds himself busy (and the Rostovs, just like the Tolstoy household, "Seldom were there fewer than twelve at dinner..", despite being unable to afford it, always have people eating with them and staying with them) in the city to where he cannot accomplish all he sets out to do, the Tolstoys were no different, and the positive view of the more simplistic major city of Moscow, which is constantly held positively versus St. Petersburg (though latter Tolstoy, after seeing the crushing poverty that many lived in Russia's ancient capital, rejected Moscow as well, cementing his beliefs about rural life being inherently morally superior to city life).

"Moscow might not be the most sophisticated city in Russia, but it was gay at Christmastime; and somehow, perhaps because town life kept them so busy, the Tolstoys quarreled less and Lev Nikolaevich was most often in good spirits."

Staying with explicitly War and Peace related inspirations and the Behrs as the Rostovs, Tanya's reaction to the novel is intriguing.

"Tanya proclaimed that Vera was Lisa to the life, and although disconnected by how closely Natasha resembled herself, she laughed merrily when her favorite childhood doll, Mimi, popped up in the story. Tanya also had remarked the character Boris resembled Polivanov in both his appearance and his behavior."

While I made the connection to Andrei with Polivanov, the connection to Boris, mostly portrayed as a negative and amoral character in the novel (even more so in the final version than the earlier version, which may play a role here), makes Polivanov a person who would most likely despise their depiction in the novel. These depictions didn't just rely on episodes from his own life or people he knew, but also episodes from the lives of other.

"Sonya's brother Sasha...Tolstoy had based some of the episodes involving young soldiers on stories Sasha had told him of his own exploits in the army. One "fictional" incident described an actual event so closely that Tolstoy had written Sasha for permission"

It is not just the personalities and incidents that Tolstoy culled from real life into War and Peace, it is also the names (though how much of this is coincidence since there seems to be a shortage of variety of names in Tolstoy's depictions of Russia is hard for me to tell), with Nikolai being the oldest of Tolstoy's brothers (as well as the name of his father) and being the name that he wanted to give one of his sons, though Sonya vetoed because she believed it was unlucky (Edwards highlights quite a bit of superstition in the Tolstoy and Behrs families, with names not only being an indication of luck and how the baby would turn out, but their birthdays, both month and year, appearing as indications of whether they would live or die, which was relevant for all 19th century families, including the Tolstoys). Tolstoy's sister was named Marya, making two of Tolstoy's siblings possessing the names of two of the five main characters in War and Peace (not to mention Andrei's father and son sharing the name Nikolai). Even the rather minor character Dunyasha, a maid, doesn't seem to have been named this by accident, with her namesake showing up in Tolstoy's life as a "tall, large-boned" maid.

Late in his career, as Tolstoy became even more controversial, these depictions of real life became an extremely sore point for Sonya.

"Tolstoy had included incidents and details from their family life in The Kreutzer Sonata, and this had offended Sonya almost more than the moral he had drawn. She was certain that the world now thought of her as the "lustful, evil" wife in the novel."

While this would seem to be unforgivable and indefensible when the novel eventually ran into problems with the government, this isn't what happened, which I think tells us a lot about Sonya as a person.

"When The Kreutzer Sonata was originally submitted to the Tsar, the Tsarina had read it first she had been shocked by it and had prevailed on her husband to forbid publication. There seemed little chance that he would reverse his decision, but Sonya (against Tolstoy's will) decided to go to St. Petersburg and appeal the ban...Sonya's aspirations of further audiences at court had been smashed."

And Edwards frames a lot of Sonya's motivation and action towards Tolstoy in his work as seeing him as a genius fiction writer but as someone whose ideas and non-fiction were ridiculous (ironically or not, this is not a unique view of Tolstoy, and may even be the majority view of the modern reader, even displaying itself in criticism of War and Peace where the narrative is praised but the philosophical portions are reviled or skipped). Here, Sonya hates The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstoy's worst long-form fiction work, and has legitimate reasons to hate it, but sacrifices her courtly life (incidentally, something none of the women in War and Peace are willing to do) to stand up, not for what she believes in but whom she believes in.

Readers may be disappointed or read a lot into my focus on Leo Tolstoy and his work when talking about a biography about Sonya Behrs Tolstoy and that misses the point of the entire book (though the alternative argument probably is that there would not be biographies about Sonya Behrs if there wasn't the connection she had with Leo Tolstoy) and I will just concede the point. Still, I think the perspective that Edwards gives us and the context we get of Leo's family and home life is worth understanding for serious readers of Tolstoy, especially those interested in the context of his works and career.