Countess Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya (, (); – 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.
Biography
Sophia Behrs was one of three daughters of a
Baltic Germans, 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.
On 17 September 1862, when Sophia was 18 years old, the couple became formally engaged after Tolstoy gave Sophia a written proposal of marriage,
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.
(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.
Tolstaya was pregnant 16 times; three of her pregnancies ended in miscarriages.
The Tolstoys had 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood.
With the growing interest of her husband in spiritual matters, Tolstaya took over the running of the family estate.
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.
In 1887, Tolstaya regained interest in the relatively new art of photography, which she had learned at age 16.[The latest condensed version, The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy, translated by Cathy Porter, was published by Alma Books, London, in 2009 (). Also see: ] Tolstaya wrote her memoirs as well, which she titled My Life.[ ] 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.
Controversy related to Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
In 1889, Leo Tolstoy published his book
The Kreutzer Sonata.
The book advocated for sexual abstinence. Its narrator murders his wife in a fit of jealousy.
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.
Tolstaya wrote two novellas as a response to
The Kreutzer Sonata, which both remained unpublished until 2000. The two novellas are
written between 1891 and 1894 and
Song Without Words written in 1898.
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.
In popular culture
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,
and Leo Tolstoy was portrayed by Christopher Plummer. Both actors were nominated for
in their respective categories. Her life was also serialised in August 2010 by BBC's Radio 4 with the title
A Simple Life.
In 2022, Tolstaya was the main character of the film
A Couple by Frederick Wiseman.
French actress Nathalie Boutefeu is cast as Tolstaya in the film, which consists of monologues based on Tolstaya's diaries.
Works
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.
Some of her literary work was published more than a century after she wrote them.
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
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The Memoirs of Sofia Tolstoy, which she titled My Life – at University of Ottawa Press
-
Whose Fault? (), Oktyabr 1994/10, 6-59. German Translation: Eine Frage der Schuld, Zürich 2008.
-
Song without Words (), unpublished in Russia. German Translation: Lied ohne Worte, Zürich 2010.
-
Michael Katz (ed. and trans.), The Kreutzer Sonata Variations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). Includes Tolstaya's "Whose Fault?" and "Song Without Words" as well as excerpts from her diary and My Life. Leo Tolstoy's story "The Kreutzer Sonata," Leo and Sofia's son Lev Lvovich Tolstoy's story "Chopin's Prelude," and other related writings by Leo, Lev Lvovich, and the Tolstoys' daughter Alexandra Lvovna appear in the same volume.
-
Cathy Porter (trans.), The Diaries of Sophia Tolstoy (London: HarperCollins, 2010).
Further reading
-
Cynthia Asquith. Married to Tolstoy (Hutchinson, 1960)
-
Anne Edwards. Sonya: The Life of Countess Tolstoy (Hodder & Stoughton, 1981)
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René Fülöp-Miller (ed.) New Light on Tolstoy. Literary Fragments, Letters and Reminiscences Not Previously Published (George G. Harrap, 1931)
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Nina Niktina. Sofya Tolstaya. Moscow, 2010
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Alexandra Popoff. Sophia Tolstoy. A Biography. Free Press, 2010
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Ursula Keller, Natalja Sharandak. Sofja Andrejewna Tolstaja. Ein Leben an der Seite Tolstojs, Frankfurt, M. Leipzig: Insel Verlag (2009)
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Lew Tolstoj - Sofja Tolstaja: Eine Ehe in Briefen. Ed. and trans. from Russian by Ursula Keller, Natalja Sharandak. Berlin: Insel Verlag (2010)
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External links
