Bab Bab 28 · Chapter XXVIII

. Chapter XXVIII

“Strange thing! Again, when I had left my study, and was passing

through the familiar rooms, again the hope came to me that nothing had

happened. But the odor of the drugs, iodoform and phenic acid, brought

me back to a sense of reality.

“‘No, everything has happened.’

“In passing through the hall, beside the children’s chamber, I saw

little Lise. She was looking at me, with eyes that were full of fear. I

even thought that all the children were looking at me. As I approached

the door of our sleeping-room, a servant opened it from within, and

came out. The first thing that I noticed was _her_ light gray dress

upon a chair, all dark with blood. On our common bed she was stretched,

with knees drawn up.

“She lay very high, upon pillows, with her chemise half open. Linen had

been placed upon the wound. A heavy smell of iodoform filled the room.

Before, and more than anything else, I was astonished at her face,

which was swollen and bruised under the eyes and over a part of the

nose. This was the result of the blow that I had struck her with my

elbow, when she had tried to hold me back. Of beauty there was no trace

left. I saw something hideous in her. I stopped upon the threshold.

“‘Approach, approach her,’ said her sister.

“‘Yes, probably she repents,’ thought I; ‘shall I forgive her? Yes, she

is dying, I must forgive her,’ I added, trying to be generous.

“I approached the bedside. With difficulty she raised her eyes, one of

which was swollen, and uttered these words haltingly:

“‘You have accomplished what you desired. You have killed me.’

“And in her face, through the physical sufferings, in spite of the

approach of death, was expressed the same old hatred, so familiar to

me.

“‘The children . . . I will not give them to you . . . all the same. .

. . She (her sister) shall take them.’ . . .

“But of that which I considered essential, of her fault, of her

treason, one would have said that she did not think it necessary to say

even a word.

“‘Yes, revel in what you have done.’

“And she sobbed.

“At the door stood her sister with the children.

“‘Yes, see what you have done!’

“I cast a glance at the children, and then at her bruised and swollen

face, and for the first time I forgot myself (my rights, my pride), and

for the first time I saw in her a human being, a sister.

“And all that which a moment before had been so offensive to me now

seemed to me so petty,—all this jealousy,—and, on the contrary, what I

had done seemed to me so important that I felt like bending over,

approaching my face to her hand, and saying:

“‘Forgive me!’

“But I did not dare. She was silent, with eyelids lowered, evidently

having no strength to speak further. Then her deformed face began to

tremble and shrivel, and she feebly pushed me back.

“‘Why has all this happened? Why?’

“‘Forgive me,’ said I.

“‘Yes, if you had not killed me,’ she cried suddenly, and her eyes

shone feverishly. ‘Forgiveness—that is nothing. . . . If I only do not

die! Ah, you have accomplished what you desired! I hate you!’

“Then she grew delirious. She was frightened, and cried:

“‘Fire, I do not fear . . . but strike them all . . . He has gone. . .

. He has gone.’ . . .

“The delirium continued. She no longer recognized the children, not

even little Lise, who had approached. Toward noon she died. As for me,

I was arrested before her death, at eight o’clock in the morning. They

took me to the police station, and then to prison, and there, during

eleven months, awaiting the verdict, I reflected upon myself, and upon

my past, and I understood it. Yes, I began to understand from the third

day. The third day they took me to the house.” . . .

Posdnicheff seemed to wish to add something, but, no longer having the

strength to repress his sobs, he stopped. After a few minutes, having

recovered his calmness, he resumed:

“I began to understand only when I saw her in the coffin.” . . .

He uttered a sob, and then immediately continued, with haste:

“Then only, when I saw her dead face, did I understand all that I had

done. I understood that it was I, I, who had killed her. I understood

that I was the cause of the fact that she, who had been a moving,

living, palpitating being, had now become motionless and cold, and that

there was no way of repairing this thing. He who has not lived through

that cannot understand it.”

We remained silent a long time. Posdnicheff sobbed and trembled before

me. His face had become delicate and long, and his mouth had grown

larger.

“Yes,” said he suddenly, “if I had known what I now know, I should

never have married her, never, not for anything.”

Again we remained silent for a long time.

“Yes, that is what I have done, that is my experience, We must

understand the real meaning of the words of the Gospel,—Matthew, v.

28,—‘that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed

adultery’; and these words relate to the wife, to the sister, and not

only to the wife of another, but especially to one’s own wife.”

THE END.

LESSON OF “THE KREUTZER SONATA.”

I have received, and still continue to receive, numbers of letters from

persons who are perfect strangers to me, asking me to state in plain

and simple language my own views on the subject handled in the story

entitled “The Kreutzer Sonata.” With this request I shall now endeavor

to comply.

My views on the question may be succinctly stated as follows: Without

entering into details, it will be generally admitted that I am accurate

in saying that many people condone in young men a course of conduct

with regard to the other sex which is incompatible with strict

morality, and that this dissoluteness is pardoned generally. Both

parents and the government, in consequence of this view, may be said to

wink at profligacy, and even in the last resource to encourage its

practice. I am of opinion that this is not right.

It is not possible that the health of one class should necessitate the

ruin of another, and, in consequence, it is our first duty to turn a

deaf ear to such an essential immoral doctrine, no matter how strongly

society may have established or law protected it. Moreover, it needs to

be fully recognized that men are rightly to be held responsible for the

consequences of their own acts, and that these are no longer to be

visited on the woman alone. It follows from this that it is the duty of

men who do not wish to lead a life of infamy to practice such

continence in respect to all woman as they would were the female

society in which they move made up exclusively of their own mothers and

sisters.

A more rational mode of life should be adopted which would include

abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, from excess in eating and from

flesh meat, on the one hand, and recourse to physical labor on the

other. I am not speaking of gymnastics, or of any of those occupations

which may be fitly described as playing at work; I mean the genuine

toil that fatigues. No one need go far in search of proofs that this

kind of abstemious living is not merely possible, but far less hurtful

to health than excess. Hundreds of instances are known to every one.

This is my first contention.

In the second place, I think that of late years, through various

reasons which I need not enter, but among which the above-mentioned

laxity of opinion in society and the frequent idealization of the

subject in current literature and painting may be mentioned, conjugal

infidelity has become more common and is considered less reprehensible.

I am of opinion that this is not right. The origin of the evil is

twofold. It is due, in the first place, to a natural instinct, and, in

the second, to the elevation of this instinct to a place to which it

does not rightly belong. This being so, the evil can only be remedied

by effecting a change in the views now in vogue about “falling in love”

and all that this term implies, by educating men and women at home

through family influence and example, and abroad by means of healthy

public opinion, to practice that abstinence which morality and

Christianity alike enjoin. This is my second contention.

In the third place I am of opinion that another consequence of the

false light in which “falling in love,” and what it leads to, are

viewed in our society, is that the birth of children has lost its

pristine significance, and that modern marriages are conceived less and

less from the point of view of the family. I am of opinion that this is

not right. This is my third contention.

In the fourth place, I am of opinion that the children (who in our

society are considered an obstacle to enjoyment—an unlucky accident, as

it were) are educated not with a view to the problem which they will be

one day called on to face and to solve, but solely with an eye to the

pleasure which they may be made to yield to their parents. The

consequence is, that the children of human beings are brought up for

all the world like the young of animals, the chief care of their

parents being not to train them to such work as is worthy of men and

women, but to increase their weight, or add a cubit to their stature,

to make them spruce, sleek, well-fed, and comely. They rig them out in

all manner of fantastic costumes, wash them, over-feed them, and refuse

to make them work. If the children of the lower orders differ in this

last respect from those of the well-to-do classes, the difference is

merely formal; they work from sheer necessity, and not because their

parents recognize work as a duty. And in over-fed children, as in

over-fed animals, sensuality is engendered unnaturally early.

Fashionable dress to-day, the course of reading, plays, music, dances,

luscious food, all the elements of our modern life, in a word, from the

pictures on the little boxes of sweetmeats up to the novel, the tale,

and the poem, contribute to fan this sensuality into a strong,

consuming flame, with the result that sexual vices and diseases have

come to be the normal conditions of the period of tender youth, and

often continue into the riper age of full-blown manhood. And I am of

opinion that this is not right.

It is high time it ceased. The children of human beings should not be

brought up as if they were animals; and we should set up as the object

and strive to maintain as the result of our labors something better and

nobler than a well-dressed body. This is my fourth contention.

In the fifth place, I am of opinion that, owing to the exaggerated and

erroneous significance attributed by our society to love and to the

idealized states that accompany and succeed it, the best energies of

our men and women are drawn forth and exhausted during the most

promising period of life; those of the men in the work of looking for,

choosing, and winning the most desirable objects of love, for which

purpose lying and fraud are held to be quite excusable; those of the

women and girls in alluring men and decoying them into liaisons or

marriage by the most questionable means conceivable, as an instance of

which the present fashions in evening dress may be cited. I am of

opinion that this is not right.

The truth is, that the whole affair has been exalted by poets and

romancers to an undue importance, and that love in its various

developments is not a fitting object to consume the best energies of

men. People set it before them and strive after it, because their view

of life is as vulgar and brutish as is that other conception frequently

met with in the lower stages of development, which sees in luscious and

abundant food an end worthy of man’s best efforts. Now, this is not

right and should not be done. And, in order to avoid doing it, it is

only needful to realize the fact that whatever truly deserves to be

held up as a worthy object of man’s striving and working, whether it be

the service of humanity, of one’s country, of science, of art, not to

speak of the service of God, is far above and beyond the sphere of

personal enjoyment. Hence, it follows that not only to form a liaison,

but even to contract marriage, is, from a Christian point of view, not

a progress, but a fall. Love, and all the states that accompany and

follow it, however we may try in prose and verse to prove the contrary,

never do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy of

men, but always make it more difficult. This is my fifth contention.

How about the human race? If we admit that celibacy is better and

nobler than marriage, evidently the human race will come to an end.

But, if the logical conclusion of the argument is that the human race

will become extinct, the whole reasoning is wrong.

To that I reply that the argument is not mine; I did not invent it.

That it is incumbent on mankind so to strive, and that celibacy is

preferable to marriage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years ago,

set forth in our catechisms, and professed by us as followers of

Christ.

Chastity and celibacy, it is urged, cannot constitute the ideal of

humanity, because chastity would annihilate the race which strove to

realize it, and humanity cannot set up as its ideal its own

annihilation. It may be pointed out in reply that only that is a true

ideal, which, being unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in

degrees of proximity. Such is the Christian ideal of the founding of

God’s kingdom, the union of all living creatures by the bonds of love.

The conception of its attainment is incompatible with the conception of

the movement of life. What kind of life could subsist if all living

creatures were joined together by the bonds of love? None. Our

conception of life is inseparably bound up with the conception of a

continual striving after an unattainable ideal.

But even if we suppose the Christian ideal of perfect chastity

realized, what then? We should merely find ourselves face to face on

the one hand with the familiar teaching of religion, one of whose

dogmas is that the world will have an end; and on the other of

so-called science, which informs us that the sun is gradually losing

its heat, the result of which will in time be the extinction of the

human race.

Now there is not and cannot be such an institution as Christian

marriage, just as there cannot be such a thing as a Christian liturgy

(Matt. vi. 5-12; John iv. 21), nor Christian teachers, nor church

fathers (Matt. xxiii. 8-10), nor Christian armies, Christian law

courts, nor Christian States. This is what was always taught and

believed by true Christians of the first and following centuries. A

Christian’s ideal is not marriage, but love for God and for his

neighbor. Consequently in the eyes of a Christian relations in marriage

not only do not constitute a lawful, right, and happy state, as our

society and our churches maintain, but, on the contrary, are always a

fall.

Such a thing as Christian marriage never was and never could be. Christ

did not marry, nor did he establish marriage; neither did his disciples

marry. But if Christian marriage cannot exist, there is such a thing as

a Christian view of marriage. And this is how it may be formulated: A

Christian (and by this term I understand not those who call themselves

Christians merely because they were baptized and still receive the

sacrament once a year, but those whose lives are shaped and regulated

by the teachings of Christ), I say, cannot view the marriage relation

otherwise than as a deviation from the doctrine of Christ,—as a sin.

This is clearly laid down in Matt. v. 28, and the ceremony called

Christian marriage does not alter its character one jot. A Christian

will never, therefore, desire marriage, but will always avoid it.

If the light of truth dawns upon a Christian when he is already

married, or if, being a Christian, from weakness he enters into marital

relations with the ceremonies of the church, or without them, he has no

other alternative than to abide with his wife (and the wife with her

husband, if it is she who is a Christian) and to aspire together with

her to free themselves of their sin. This is the Christian view of

marriage; and there cannot be any other for a man who honestly

endeavors to shape his life in accordance with the teachings of Christ.

To very many persons the thoughts I have uttered here and in “The

Kreutzer Sonata” will seem strange, vague, even contradictory. They

certainly do contradict, not each other, but the whole tenor of our

lives, and involuntarily a doubt arises, “on which side is truth,—on

the side of the thoughts which seem true and well-founded, or on the

side of the lives of others and myself?” I, too, was weighed down by

that same doubt when writing “The Kreutzer Sonata.” I had not the

faintest presentiment that the train of thought I had started would

lead me whither it did. I was terrified by my own conclusion, and I was

at first disposed to reject it, but it was impossible not to hearken to

the voice of my reason and my conscience. And so, strange though they

may appear to many, opposed as they undoubtedly are to the trend and

tenor of our lives, and incompatible though they may prove with what I

have heretofore thought and uttered, I have no choice but to accept

them. “But man is weak,” people will object. “His task should be

regulated by his strength.”

This is tantamount to saying, “My hand is weak. I cannot draw a

straight line,—that is, a line which will be the shortest line between

two given points,—and so, in order to make it more easy for myself, I,

intending to draw a straight, will choose for my model a crooked line.”

The weaker my hand, the greater the need that my model should be

perfect.

_Leo Tolstoy._