Every Unhappy Family Is Unhappy in Its Own Way
Excerpt: 'Song Without Words'
Sophia Tolstoy self-portrait at Yasnaya Polyana, June 1901. Sophia Tolstoy/National Geographic hide caption
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Sophia Tolstoy/National Geographic
Sophia Tolstoy self-portrait at Yasnaya Polyana, June 1901.
Sophia Tolstoy/National Geographic
Both Husband and wife used their diaries to communicate, saying things they didn't dare say aloud to one another:
DIARY ENTRY (LEV)
8 January 1863
In the morning ---her clothes. She challenged me to object to them, and I did object, and said so ---tears and vulgar explanations ... We patched things upwardly somehow. I'm always dissatisfied with myself on these occasions, especially with the kisses ---they are faux patches. ... I feel that she is depressed, but I'grand more than depressed nevertheless, and I tin can't say anything to her ---at that place'south nada to say. I'm just cold, and I clutch at any work with ardor. She will finish loving me. I'm virtually certain of that. The one affair that tin save me is if she doesn't autumn in dear with someone else, and that won't exist my doing. She says I'one thousand kind. I don't similar to hear it; it's simply for that reason that she will terminate loving me.
DIARY ENTRY (SONYA) 9 January 1863
Never in my life have I felt so wretched with remorse. Never did I imagine that I could be and so much to blame. I have been high-strung with tears all 24-hour interval. I feel so depressed. I am afraid to talk to him or wait at him. ... I am sure he must of a sudden have realized only how vile and pathetic I am.
DIARY ENTRY (LEV) xv January 1863
Got upward belatedly; nosotros're on friendly terms. The last squabble has left some small (ephemeral) traces — or maybe fourth dimension has. Every such squabble, withal little, is a scar on love. A momentary feeling of passion, vexation, self-love or pride will laissez passer, merely a scar, yet pocket-sized, volition remain forever on the best things that be in the globe — dearest. I shall know this and guard our happiness, and you know it also...
DIARY ENTRY (LEV) 5 August 1863
... I've looked through her diary — suppressed anger with me glows beneath words of tenderness. It's often the aforementioned in real life. If this is so, and information technology's all a mistake on her function — it'southward terrible...
Nearly three decades after this exchange Sonya decided to copy her married man's diary for posterity. She noted on Nov xx, 1890, I take been copying Lyovochka's diaries, which cover his whole life. ... She described how the copying job affected her.
DIARY ENTRY (SONYA) 8 December 1890
I am withal copying out Lyovochka's diary. Why did I never read and copy it before? It has simply been lying in my chest of drawers all this time. I don't think I ever recovered from the shock of reading Lyovochka'southward diaries when I was engaged to him — I can yet remember the disturbing pangs of jealously, the horror of that first appalling experience of male depravity ...
Sonya seems to accept photographed by and large when she was happy and written by and large when she was depressed, but not always. Her just entry for the twelvemonth 1868 reads:
DIARY ENTRY 31 July 1868
It makes me laugh to read my diary. What a lot of contradictions — as though I were the unhappiest of women! But who could be happier? When I'm along in the room I sometimes laugh for joy and cross myself, and pray to God for many, many more than years of happiness. I always write in my diary when we quarrel. ... and we wouldn't quarrel if we didn't love i another. ... I have been married for six years now. ... only I however beloved him with the same passionate, poetic, fevered, jealous love ...
Twenty years later both their diaries are filled with bitter accusations and anguish. At the end Tolstoy hid his diaries from Sonya, and she, in a state of paranoia, searched obsessively for them.
Reprinted with permission of the National Geographic Society from the book Vocal Without Words: The Photographs & Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy by Leah Bendavid-Val. Copyright (c) 2007 National Geographic Society.
Source: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15244466
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