Tolstoy's Desk

The desk upon which Tolstoy wrote "Anna Karenina"

I imagine the day when Tolstoy might have sat down at this writing desk, in this room, taking refuge from the burgeoning family life in Moscow – that is, the many teenage daughters and his capable, practical wife Sonia who aptly managed the minutia of . . . well, everything.  Perhaps an argument had just ensued about which gown a young daughter ought to wear to an upcoming Moscow ball – after all, the family wintered in Moscow so the daughters could attend such balls and receive a good Moscow education and be part of "good society."

Tolstoy would have much preferred to stay year round at his working country estate, Yasnaya Polyana, just a few hours' coach ride south of Moscow, to toil alongside his many serfs on the soil of his Motherland. Tolstoy, born into wealth, had always held onto his ideal to be part of the common people, the "true" Russians, he called them -- their folklore, their wholesome peasant food, their simple pleasures.  Sonia was irritated by this ideal of his – after all, she had a household to run, daughters to marry, work to be edited and published and given credit where credit was due.  They were always at odds with each other in this way, Sonia and Leo – his high ideals and the romance of life among the working class, her practicality in what was needed to run a household.  Always the arguments . . .

The Tolstoy family photos

I imagine it was in this state of mind that Tolstoy retreated one cold Moscow morning to his desk in the small room at the back of the house.  I imagine he sat for a few moments in meditative solitude as the din of family life subsided from his conscious mind -- the echoes, the fury, the inescapable world of practical matters still audible through thick walls meant to barricade him from this world . . . this world . . . of Moscow society and teenage daughters and ever-practical wives . . . oh, this world.

So, I imagine . . . that Tolstoy eventually sat slightly forward at the tidy desk which Sonia had only that morning cleaned and prepared and made ready for writing.  He would have picked up his pen, dipped it in a full ink well, shuffled a bit of paper to his view (for he was very nearsighted and in fact had sawed off the legs of his chair so he could be closer to the desk), and so write these famous words:  All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

That is how he began the saga of Anna Karenina, the great novel about families -- the Oblonskys, the Karenins and the Vronskys -- each unhappy, but . . . in different ways.  Buried within the novel is the story of Levin and Kitty, representing Tolstoy’s own vision of marital happiness – Kitty, a devoted wife in all things agrarian and otherwise; and Levin, a husband who works the fields alongside his happy serfs.  They represent mutual respect and love and equality for all. 



Sonia's desk: for household business and editing

Of course, I don't really know Tolstoy's state of mind when he approached his desk in Moscow to write Anna Karenina.  Honestly, I don't think he was moved by inspiration nearly as much as careful planning.  I do know that he and Sonia fought their entire lives about his ideals and her realism -- she, always determined to keep him on track; and he, always headstrong to go off track -- until eventually he did so in his old age by boarding a train after a heated argument and thus contracting the illness and delirium that ultimately killed him.  Sonia carried on the fight for practicality even after his death -- now with publishers who would deem to use the proceeds from his novels for the "common good" rather than for Tolstoy's own family.  These were pre-revolutionary times, and the publishers believed that the great writer Leonid Tolstoy belonged to the people -- not to his family.

And yet Sonia had managed the household(s), given birth to 13 children, and edited and re-edited and written out by hand every novel her famous husband wrote.  Some even venture to say that it was Sonia's good reason and judgment (and talent for writing) that made its way into the characters we respect so highly in his novels.  She had always been in charge of the details, the minutia, after all.   

I think of all these conflicts and points of view when I look at Tolstoy's desk where he had written, among others, his famous novel about the unhappiest of wives, Anna Karenina – that is, in Russian nomenclature, "Anna, the wife of Karenin."