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Sophia Tolstaya

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Countess Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya (Russian: Со́фья Андре́евна Толста́я, née Behrs (Берс); 3 September [O.S. 22 August] 1844 – 4 November 1919), sometimes anglicised as Sofia Tolstoy, Sophia Tolstoy and Sonya Tolstoy, was a Russian diarist, and the wife of writer Count Leo Tolstoy.

Sophia Tolstaya
Софья Толстая
Born
Sophia Andreyevna Behrs

(1844-08-22)22 August 1844
Pokrovskoye-Streshnevo Estate, Moscow Governorate, Russian Empire
Died4 November 1919(1919-11-04) (aged 75)
Yasnaya Polyana, Tula Governorate, Soviet Russia
NationalityRussian
Other namesSophia Tolstoy, Sonya Tolstoy, Sofia Tolstoy
Occupation(s)Diarist, copyist
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1862; died 1910)​
Children13

Biography

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Sophia Tolstaya in 1862

Sophia Behrs was one of three daughters of a Baltic-German, Andrey Evstafievich Behrs (1808–1868), Imperial court physician, and his Russian wife, Liubov Alexandrovna Islavinа (1826–1886). Her maternal great-grandfather, Count Pyotr Zavadovsky, was the first Minister of education in Russia's history. Sophia had been acquainted with her future husband, Leo Tolstoy, from childhood; he was 16 years her senior and had befriended her mother when he was a boy.[1] On 17 September 1862, when Sophia was 18 years old, the couple became formally engaged after Tolstoy gave Sophia a written proposal of marriage,[2] marrying a week later in Moscow. At the time of their marriage, Leo Tolstoy was well known as a novelist following the publication of The Cossacks. On the eve of their wedding, Tolstoy gave Sophia his diaries that detailed his sexual relations with female servants.[3] (In Anna Karenina, 34-year-old Konstantin Levin, a semi-autobiographical character, behaves similarly, asking his 19-year-old fiancée Kitty to read his diaries and learn of his past transgressions.) The diaries included the fact that Tolstoy had fathered a child by a woman who remained on the Yasnaya Polyana estate.

 
Sophia Tolstaya and daughter Alexandra Tolstaya

Tolstaya was pregnant 16 times; three of her pregnancies ended in miscarriages.[4] The Tolstoys had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood.[5] With the growing interest of her husband in spiritual matters, Tolstaya took over the running of the family estate.[6] Sophia acted as copyist of War and Peace, copying and editing the manuscript seven times from beginning to end at home at night by candlelight after the children and servants had gone to bed, using an inkwell pen and sometimes requiring a magnifying glass to read her husband's notes.[7]

In 1887, Tolstaya regained interest in the relatively new art of photography, which she had learned at age 16.[8] She took over 1,000 photographs that documented her life and the decline of the Russian Empire.[9] She was a diarist and recorded her life with Leo Tolstoy in a series of diaries which were published in English translation in the 1980s.[7] Tolstaya wrote her memoirs as well, which she titled My Life.[10]

 
Family of Leo Tolstoy, Yasnaya Polyana, 1887

The marriage of Tolstaya and Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the famously unhappy marriages of literary history.[11] Their children took sides in the marital discord. Their daughter Alexandra supported her father, whereas their son Leo Junior favoured his mother.[3] Tolstaya struggled with her husband's increasing devotion to spiritual matters and his neglect of their family life. The couple argued over Tolstoy's desire to give away all his private property.[12] In 1910, at the age of 82, Leo Tolstoy abruptly left Sophia, accompanied by their daughter Alexandra and his doctor, Dushan Makovicki (Dušan Makovický). Leo left out of anger after he overheard Sophia searching his study for his will, which she was concerned he wanted to change.[13] He died 10 days later in the hamlet of Astapavo.[4] Sophia was kept away from him (as depicted in the film The Last Station).[8] Following the death of her husband, Sophia continued to live in Yasnaya Polyana and survived the Russian Revolution in relative peace. She died on 4 November 1919.[14]

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In 1889, Leo Tolstoy published his book The Kreutzer Sonata.[3] The book advocated for sexual abstinence. Its narrator murders his wife in a fit of jealousy.[15] Although quickly banned from publication by censorship, the novel had been assumed in the Russian society to be describing the unhappy marriage of Leo Tolstoy and Tolstaya, which greatly offended Tolstaya.[16] Tolstaya wrote two novellas as a response to The Kreutzer Sonata, which both remained unpublished until 2000. The two novellas are Whose Fault? [de] written between 1891 and 1894 and Song Without Words written in 1898.[3] In both, the character of the husband is portrayed as a man insensitive to the needs of his wife. Despite her objections to The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstaya helped lift the ban on the publication of the novel. She obtained an audience with Tsar Alexander III in 1891, who accepted that the novel be included in a broader publication of Leo Tolstoy's books.[3]

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She was portrayed by Helen Mirren in the 2009 The Last Station, based on the 1990 biographical novel of the same name by Jay Parini,[17] and Leo Tolstoy was portrayed by Christopher Plummer. Both actors were nominated for Academy Awards in their respective categories. Her life was also serialised in August 2010 by BBC's Radio 4 with the title A Simple Life.[18] In 2022, Tolstaya was the main character of the film A Couple by Frederick Wiseman.[11] French actress Nathalie Boutefeu is cast as Tolstaya in the film, which consists of monologues based on Tolstaya’s diaries.

 
The family circle at Yasnaya Polyana (c. 1905).

Works

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Many of Tolstaya's works were published postmortem, long after being written. This is because Tolstaya was critical of Leo Tolstoy in her writing and the Russian authorities did not want the status of the famous author tarnished.[19] Some of her literary work was published more than a century after she wrote them.[15]

List of publications

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  • The Countess Tolstoy's Later Diary 1891-1897 London, Victor Gollancz, 1929; translated by Alexander Werth
  • Autobiography of Sophie Andreevna Tolstoi online at archive.org
  • The Memoirs of Sofia Tolstoy, which she titled My Life – at University of Ottawa Press
  • Whose Fault? (Russian: Чья вина?), Oktyabr 1994/10, 6-59. German Translation: Eine Frage der Schuld, Zürich 2008.[20] English translation: Sophia Tolstoy's rebuttal of her husband Leo's accusations, The Edwin Bellen Press, New York 2010
  • Song without Words (Russian: Песня без слов), unpublished in Russia. German Translation: Lied ohne Worte, Zürich 2010.[21]
  • Cathy Porter (tr), The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy (London: HarperCollins, 2010).

References

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  1. ^ Popoff, Alexandra (2010). Sophia Tolstoy: A Biography. Free Press – via Google Books.
  2. ^ The autobiography of Countess Sophie Tolstoi. Translated by Koteliansky, S. S.; Woolf, Leonard. Vasilii Spiridonov. Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. 1922 – via Internet Archive.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  3. ^ a b c d e O'Grady, Desmond (11 July 2015). "Tolstoy's wife fights back with her own newly published stories of infidelity". Financial Review. Retrieved 25 December 2022.
  4. ^ a b "TOLSTOYS IN TORMENT". Chicago Tribune. 31 July 1994. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  5. ^ Feuer, Kathryn B. (1996). Tolstoy and the Genesis of War and Peace. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1902-6.
  6. ^ "5 Things You May Not Know About Leo Tolstoy". History. 22 August 2018. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  7. ^ a b The latest condensed version, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, translated by Cathy Porter, was published by Alma Books, London, in 2009 (ISBN 9781846880803). Also see: Golinenko, O. A.; Rozanova, S. A.; Shumova, B. M.; Pokrovskaya, I. A.; Azarova, N. I., eds. (1985). The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy. Translated by Cathy, Porter. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-528-18-2 – via Internet Archive.
  8. ^ a b Shonk, Catherine (21 December 2007). "What Mrs Tolstoy Saw". The St. Petersburg Times.
  9. ^ Bendavid-Val, Leah (2007). "Song Without Words: The Photographs & Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy". National Geographic.
  10. ^ Tolstaya, Sophia (2010), Donskov, Andrew (ed.), My Life, University of Ottawa Press, ISBN 978-0-7766-3042-7
  11. ^ a b Peter, Bradshaw (2 September 2022). "A Couple review – Tolstoy's other half in mournful closeup". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  12. ^ "Infobase Learning". Retrieved 31 May 2013. (subscription required)
  13. ^ "Love and Hate: A Tolstoy Family Tale". NPR. 16 October 2007. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  14. ^ Keller, Ursula; Sharandak, Natalja (2009). Sofja Andrejewna Tolstaja: Ein Leben an der Seite Tolstojs (in German). Insel Verlag. p. 316. ISBN 9783458174080.
  15. ^ a b Grimes, William (19 August 2014). "More Than a Century Later, Sophia Tolstoy Has Her Say". The New York Times. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  16. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (2 February 2015). "Sofiya Tolstoy's Long-Lost Novella Sends Up the Sex-Hating Buffoon Her Husband Became". Slate Magazine. Archived from the original on 20 July 2022. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
  17. ^ Ed Meza (31 March 2008). "Mirren, Plummer to star in 'Station'". Variety. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  18. ^ "A Simple Life". BBC Radio 4. BBC. 10 September 2013. Retrieved 25 December 2022. Leo Tolstoy invites an aristocratic Christian disciple to stay. Is pregnant Sofya right not to trust him? Stars Ian McDiarmid.
  19. ^ Flood, Alison (2 June 2009). "Sofia Tolstoy's diaries paint bleak portrait of marriage to Leo". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2022.
  20. ^ "Sofja Tolstaja: Eine Frage der Schuld. Manesse Verlag (Gebundenes Buch, Literatur aus Russland und Osteuropa)" (in German). Randomhouse.de. Retrieved 3 October 2012.
  21. ^ "Sofja Tolstaja: Lied ohne Worte. Manesse Verlag (Gebundenes Buch, Literatur aus Russland und Osteuropa)" (in German). Randomhouse.de. 23 January 2011. Retrieved 3 October 2012.

Further reading

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