The Last Station

25 L. N.

LETTER TO SOFYA ANDREYEVNA

YASNAYA POLYANA, 14 JUNE 1910

My dear Sonya,

1. I promise to give nobody the diary I am writing at this time. I shall keep it with me.

2. I shall ask for the return of my previous diaries from Chertkov, then I shall keep them, probably in a bank.

3. If it worries you that unfriendly biographers will, in the future, make use of those pages written in the heat of the moment registering our conflicts and struggles, I would remind you, first, that these expressions of passing emotion, in my diary as in yours, cannot pretend to present an accurate portrait of our relations. Nevertheless, if it still worries you, I shall happily take this opportunity to say, in my diary or in this letter, what my relations with you were really like and what your life has been, as I have seen it.

My relations with you and view of your life are as follows: just as I loved you when you were young, I have never stopped loving you in spite of the many causes of alienation between us. And so I continue to love you. Putting aside the issue of our sexual relations, which have ceased (a fact that can only add to the sincerity of our expressions of love), those causes were as follows: first, my growing need to withdraw from society, something which you neither would nor could follow me in, since the principles that led me to adopt my convictions opposed yours in quite basic ways. This seems, to me, perfectly natural and I cannot hold it against you. Further, in recent years, you have become increasingly irritable, even despotic and uncontrollable. This could hardly help but inhibit any display of feeling on my part, even cut off those feelings themselves. That is my second point. Third, the chief and fatal cause was something of which we are both innocent: our completely opposing ideas of the significance and purpose of life. For me, property is a sin, for you it is a necessary condition. In order not to have to separate myself from you, I have forced myself to accept circumstances that I find painful. Yet you saw my acceptance as a concession to your point of view, and this only increased our misunderstanding.

As for my view of your life, here it is:

I, a debauched person by nature, deeply depraved in my sexual appetite, and no longer in my first youth, married you, a girl of eighteen who was spiritually pure, good, and intelligent. In spite of my dreadful past, you stayed with me for nearly fifty years, loving me, living a life full of worry and anguish, giving birth to children, raising them, caring for them, and nursing me, without succumbing to any of the temptations that a beautiful, solid, and healthy woman is always exposed to; indeed, your life has been such that I have absolutely nothing to reproach you with. As for the fact that your moral development did not run parallel to mine, which has been unique, I cannot hold this against you, since the inner life of any person is a secret between that person and God, and nobody else can call that person to account in any way. I have been intolerant of you. I was deeply mistaken, and I confess my error.

4. If my relations with Chertkov upset you too much at present, I am willing to give him up, though I must say that to do so would be more unpleasant, even painful, for him than for me. But if you demand this of me, I shall comply.

5. If you do not accept these terms for a quiet and decent life, I shall withdraw my promise not to leave you. I shall simply go away, and not to Chertkov, you can rest assured! In fact, I would lay down as an absolute condition that he must not follow and settle near me. But go I certainly shall, for I simply can’t continue to live like this. I might well have continued with this life had I been able to look at all your sufferings unmoved, but I’m not capable of that.

Stop, my dove, tormenting not only those around you but yourself, for you suffer a hundred times more than they do. That is all.