Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Introduction to His Reminiscences

My friend, Paul Biryukov, having undertaken to write my biography (for the complete edition of my works), has asked me to furnish him with some particulars of my life.

I very much wished to fulfill his desire, and in my imagination I began to compose my autobiography. At first, I involuntarily began in the most natural way with only that which was good in my life, merely adding to this good side, like shade on a picture, its dark, repulsive features. But upon examining the events of my life more seriously I saw that such an autobiography, though it might not be a direct lie, would yet be a lie, owing to the biased exposure and lighting up of the good and the hushing up or smoothing down of the evil. Yet when I thought of writing the whole truth without concealing anything that was bad in my life, I was shocked at the impression which such an autobiography was bound to produce. At that time I fell ill, and during the unavoidable idleness of an invalid, my thoughts kept continually turning to my reminiscences, and dreadful these reminiscences were.

I experienced with the utmost force what Pushkin says in his verses, "Memory":

"When, for mankind, the weary day grows still, And on the City's silent heart there fall The half transparent shadows of the night With sleep, the sweet reward of daily work-- Then is the time when in the hush I wear Through dragging hours of heavy watchfulness: When, idle in the dark, most keen I feel The stinging serpent of my heart's remorse: Reflection seethes--and on my o'erwhelmed mind Rushes a multitude of woeful thoughts, While memory, her unending roll unfolds In silence, and with sick recoil I read The story of my life, and curse myself, And bitterly bewail with bitter tears-- But not one woeful line can I wash out!"

In the last line I would only make this alteration: instead of "woeful line" I would say "shameful line can I wash out."

Under this impression I wrote the following in my diary:

6th January, 1903:--I am now suffering the torments of hell: I am calling to mind all the infamies of my former life--these reminiscences do not pass away and they poison my existence. Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous life. And, if one remembers the good, one has to remember the evil too. What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness, a consciousness which, as it were, represents the general outcome of the good and the evil, like a complex equation reduced to its simplest expression: x = a positive or a negative, a great or a small quantity.

Yes, the extinction of memory is a great happiness; with memory one could not live a joyful life. As it is, with the extinction of memory we enter into life with a clean white page upon which we can write afresh good and evil.

It is true that not all my life was so fearfully bad. That character prevailed only for a period of twenty years. It is also true that even during that period my life was not the uninterrupted evil that it appeared to me during my illness; for even during that period there used to awake in me impulses toward good, although they did not last long and were soon stifled by unrestrained passions.

Still these reflections, especially during my illness, clearly showed me that my autobiography--as autobiographies are generally written--if it passed over in silence all the abomination and criminality of my life, would be a lie, and that, when a man writes his life, he should write the whole and exact truth. Only such an autobiography, however humiliating it may be for me to write it, can have a true and fruitful interest for the readers.

Thus recalling my life to mind, i.e., examining it from the point of view of the good and evil which I had done, I saw that all my long life breaks up into four periods: that splendid--especially in comparison with what comes after--that innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood up to fourteen; then the second, those dreadful twenty years, the period of coarse dissoluteness, of service of ambition and vanity, and, above all, of sensuousness; then the third period of eighteen years, from my marriage until my spiritual birth, a period which, from the worldly point of view, one might call moral; I mean that during these eighteen years I lived a regular, honest family life, without addicting myself to any vices condemned by public opinion, but a period all the interests of which were limited to egotistical family cares, to concern for the increase of wealth, the attainment of literary success, and the enjoyment of every kind of pleasure; and lastly, there is the fourth period of twenty years in which I am now living and in which I hope to die, and from the standpoint of which I see all the significance of my past life, and which I do not desire to alter in anything except in those habits of evil which were acquired by me in the previous periods.

Such a history of my life during all these four periods, I should like to write quite, quite truthfully, if God will give me the power and the time. I think that such an autobiography, even though very defective, would be more profitable to men than all that artistic prattle with which the twelve volumes of my works are filled, and to which men of our time attribute an undeserved significance.

And I should now like to do this. I will begin by describing the first joyful period of my childhood, which attracts me with special force; then, however ashamed I may be to do so, I will also describe, without hiding anything, those dreadful twenty years of the following period; then the third period, which may be of the least interest of all; and, finally, the last period of my awakening to the truth which has given me the highest well-being in life and joyous peace in view of approaching death.

In order not to repeat myself in the description of my childhood, I have read over again my work under that title, and felt sorry that I had written it--so badly, in such an insincere literary style is it written. It could not have been otherwise, first, because my aim was to describe, not my own history, but that of the companions of my childhood; and, secondly, because when writing it I was far from independent in the form of expression, being under the influence of two writers who at that time strongly impressed me: Sterne (Sentimental Journey) and Topfer (Bibliotheque de mon oncle).

I am at this day especially displeased with the last two parts, Boyhood and Youth, in which, besides the clumsy confusion of truth with fiction, there is also insincerity, the desire to put forward as good and important that which, at the time of writing, I did not regard as good and important--my democratic tendency.

I hope that what I shall now write will be better and, above all, more profitable to others.