The Tragedy of a Great Man

... This magnificent letter was written by the great humanitarian Tolstoy to his wife. In it his soul lays bare a deep tragedy — the tragedy of every great man afflicted with a woman of cheap mind.

Tolstoy loved his wife deeply; but suddenly he feels that she, in her common inclinations, is on the point of dragging him down to the level of the beast, and his soul bursts forth in this letter, asking her to kindle in her spirit the dormant ember of the soul and the blaze of deep, tender love.

The Editors

.. I wish, in these brief words, to reveal to you, my dear, the essence of my soul, and to lift the veil from what troubles and torments me in our married life.

The truth is that I was happy at the outset of our marriage; but today, alas, I have become the most wretched of men.

And I felt my great misery suddenly. I felt that misery only now, seven years after our marriage — a marriage I believed would be the most splendid, the deepest, the most perfect of marriages!...

You, my dear wife, are a woman common in mind and feelings, common in inclinations and passions — a woman who insists on being only a woman, and who imagines that so long as she is only a woman, she has done her duty by her husband and given him the happiness that every man seeks...

Yes. Everything in you to this day is mere femininity — reckless, brutish, blind — running in three currents: a passion for adornment, a passion for appearances, and a passion for kindling the fire of animal instinct in the being of your wretched, miserable husband.

Your mind employs its burning intelligence on cheap things which must, with the passage of time, kill all loftiness, all nobility, all intelligence.

How, then, can I spend my life with you while you are in this state? How can my thought, my heart, my feeling be filled with you, when I see you playing before me the role of the primitive female who has neither mind nor soul?...

The fact is that your blind femininity has dragged me down instead of elevating my person; humbled my pride instead of raising me up; debased my gifts instead of spurring them on; and set fire to my senses instead of feeding the flame of genius in my mind!..

Is it not so?.. Am I not truthful in what I say?.. Do we not live — I in my work and you in your madness — like two creatures who have never become acquainted, and whose two hearts no bond has ever joined?.. This is the truth in its terrible simplicity, my dear.

And yet there is another truth — a truth deeper in its effect, more dreadful, and more fearful in its consequence.

There is a truth that concerns me myself, which I must confess to you frankly — out of pity for you, out of pity for myself, and out of pity for the long future that awaits us..

I have begun to feel, to my own astonishment, that I am influenced by you, that I incline toward you, that I am swept along in your current, that I am soiled by your corruptions, and that I am on the verge of becoming, I too, a degraded, base creature who prefers idleness to work, adornment to simplicity, appearances to realities, and the vile, fleeting animal pleasure to the lofty, abiding pleasure of the mind!

Does this transformation please you, my wife? Does this retreat and backsliding please you, my woman? Does it please you that I should sink by your hand, crash into your abyss, and lose the gifts of my mind in the den of your caprices?.. I love you, my wife, with a love surpassing every love.

So save me — do not kill me. Do not kill me in the frost of matter; kindle the fire. Kindle in your spirit the fire of the spirit, in your thought the flame of thought, and in your heart the blaze of that deep, tender love which is a thousand times loftier and more splendid than that shameful, base love which never rises from instinct but that it roars the roar of the beast and hisses the hiss of the viper!...

This is my kiss, and this is my hope. Ponder my words well and reflect... I will not stab you in your pride. I will not wound your self-respect. I will never abandon you, and I will never be parted from our children. But if you do not alter your nature and change your conduct, I shall live with you not as a human being but as a donkey — not as a lifeless thing but as a phantom.

This is my will and this is my motto: either a complete marriage of soul and body, or a separation in mind and spirit..