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Tolstoy, the author of two masterpieces, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, remains a
writer of genius. Yet, after writing War and Peace, his existence had been torn apart by
a serious depression. This depression, which was melancholic in character, almost
destroyed him and, once he had nished Anna Karenina, led him to want to renounce
not only sexuality but also literary creation and material possessions. Through
examining Tolstoys life and work, the author tries to uncover the underground paths of
this depression, which emerged brutally in the middle of his life, and to understand why
his creative genius dried up. Like Leonardo da Vinci, Tolstoy turned away from his
artistic work, declaring that art is not only useless but even harmful , and thereafter
devoted himself to philosophical, political and religious writings. These new sublimations would help him to recover his health.
A gifted novelist, Tolstoy touched an immense number of readers. Following their triumph in Russia, his two great novels, War
and Peace and Anna Karenina, were translated and read the world over. The lyrical
realism and simplicity of his writings convey,
even today, a timeless emotion.
The prestige and fame of the great novelist
have left the vast majority of his readers with
the unfailing image of an artist of genius.
And yet, an attentive reader of War and Peace
will already detect the presence of issues that
were to take on a much greater importance in
Anna Karenina: world-weariness, depression,
anxiety and an obsession with suicide. The
scale of War and Peaces success was remarkable. Tolstoy was surprised by this success,
but also by the feelings of disillusionment
and abandonment that overcame him at the
time and that left him distraught, weary and
empty. I shall never again write such verbose
drivel as War and Peace! he wrote to a
friend.
It was a turning point in his life and the
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Misogyny
There is something dreadful and sacrilegious in carnal union , Tolstoy wrote in
1870 (1979 [14 February 1870]). He was 42
years old at the time. The simultaneous
fascination and horror that sexuality inspired
in him fuelled a misogyny that was already
visible in War and Peace. It was to be
violently expressed in Anna Karenina.
During the seven years it took to write
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy experienced very
painful moments of depression. His deepest
con icts were expressed in this novel. Depression made him vulnerable and weakened
his defences. His censorship was less severe
and his unconscious fantasies were revealed,
only thinly veiled by the ction. From the
beginning of the novel, signs and omens
predict the violent death of Anna. The scene
of her rst sexual encounter with Vronski
places death at the heart of love, like a
maggot in fruit:
Pale, his lower jaw quivering, he besought her to be
calm. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he
sees the body he has robbed of life. That body,
robbed by him of life, was their love, the rst stage of
their love. There was something awful and revolting
at the memory of what had been bought at this fearful
price of shame. But in spite of all the murderers
horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it
to pieces, hide the body, must use what he had gained
by his murder. And, as with fury the murderer falls
on the body and drags it and hacks at it, so he covered
her face and shoulders with kisses. All is over ,
she said (1877, p. 187).
bloody as a hunting scene. The murder fantasy, surfacing suddenly in the consciousness,
breaks the charm. Erotic pleasure is followed
by collapse, guilt and despair.
It is thus that the fantasy around which the
heart of the novel revolves links sexual desire
to the desire for murder, culminating in
Annas suicide. Desperate, torn apart by a
haunting jealousy, she ends up throwing
herself under a train, crushed to death.
Sexuality is both omnipresent and doggedly rejected: it was this dilemma that
tortured Tolstoy following his crisis . It
seemed to him that women exercised a demonic attraction over him, depriving him of
the sense of his own integrity and causing a
fear of dispossession and disintegration of the
ego. Prior to the crisis , in spite of the
already apparent divide between the affectionate side and the erotic side of love, an
oedipal construct seems to have been established. The anxieties of the ego remained
focused on the fantasy of castration and guilt.
But this guilt was already extremely pervasive and it was expressed in excessive
self-accusations regarding what he called
criminal debauchery .
Until his marriage, Tolstoy had enjoyed
very free sexual experiences: it seems clear
that he established no true object relation.
However, when he fell madly in love with
Sophie Bers, he felt a state of elation that
moved him deeply: Ive been in love , he
wrote in his diary, but never like this: this is
more than an emotionthis is an inner force
possessing me (1979 [24 March 1863],
p. 549). He had rediscovered the young
plaited girl of his teenage dreams. The best
years of his life followed his marriage to
Sophie. Being in love provided a kind of
narcissistic refuelling that enabled his vocation as a writer to be con rmed and accomplished in an explosion of creativity. He
wrote War and Peace. Sublimation through
writing enabled him to transform and develop
the contradictory urges that had begun to
threaten his stability.
But the main objectthe object nally
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And so Tolstoy tortured himself, the superego mercilessly judging the ego identi ed
with the object: his mother. This maternal
imago, a source of arousal and anxiety,
instilled in him a femininity that threatened
his integrity. This feminine pole was linked to
his moral masochism.
In The economic problem of masochism ,
Freud re ects on the origins of moral masochism, which he links to unconscious guilt
feelings. He remarks that, the suffering
accompanying neurosis is precisely the factor
that enables it to become useful to the masochistic tendency: it is a question of being able
to maintain a certain level of suffering
(1924, p. 294). This was undoubtedly the
origin of the drive that pushed Tolstoy to
constantly transgress the boundaries he imposed upon himself and which he wanted to
impose upon others. However, while the
sadism of the superego remained ercely
present in the consciousness, the masochism
remained unconscious.
In Memoirs of a Madman, Tolstoy shares
memories that illuminate the origins of his
masochistic tendencies: here these relate to
erogenous masochism. He describes moments
in his childhood when he was invaded by a
fantasy that caused in him an unspeakable
anxiety and crying t . One such t was
caused by a violent argument between his
nanny and the steward:
Their shouting frightened me, frightened me greatly.
I felt an unspeakable terror invading me. I hid my
head under the covers and at the same time a vision
came to my mind: that of a small boy who could only
just be made out and a man ogging him with a
vengeance. The face of the man seemed monstrous to
me: he hit him crying, You won t do that again! You
won t do that again! it was THAT which hit me: I
began to sob, sob, and it was a long time before
anyone could calm me. Were these inexplicable sobs
of a child not the rst sign of my current madness?
(1880, p. 421).
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established a relationship of hatred and rivalry. He used his in uence over Tolstoy to
convince him to draw up, unbeknown to his
wife, a will that disinherited her, and he
pushed him to leave her. It was then that
Tolstoy became aware of the harmful pressure
Tchertkov was exerting over him. This man,
in whom he had placed all his trust, now
appeared as a danger and a threat to him: he
felt extremely guilty at having been in uenced by him to disinherit his wife and
family.
The nancial interest that royalties for
the publication and distribution of Tolstoys
colossal work represented fuelled the rivalry
and stirred up hatred between Tchertkov and
the Countess Tolstoy.
Tolstoy had long held the idea of leaving
his wife, children and home. Each time
an overly violent con ict erupted between
Sophie and him, he felt he should leaveto
escape the suffering but also to devote
himself to his spiritual search. He imagined
that he would thus nally concretise his desire
to separate himself from the maternal image
he had not been able to put to rest, in spite of
his efforts and renunciations. Having lost
con dence in Tchertkov and exhausted by the
incessant quarrels, the pressure became intolerable for him. This time, he felt he could no
longer live with his wife. What he did not yet
know was that neither could he live without
her.
Similarly, he would be unable to bear his
exile from Yasnaya Polyana, the maternal
refuge to which he had always returned. In
days gone by, he had written on return from a
trip, How have we, this house and I, managed
to stay apart so long?
Tolstoys death
On 24 September 1910, Tolstoy wrote in
his diary, They are tearing me apart: I want
to escape them all (1979 [1910], p. 936). On
the night of 2728 October, a cold and rainy
night, Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana with his
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Translations of summary
Tolsto reste ecrivain de ge nie, l auteur de deux
chefs-d oeuvre: Guerre et Paix et Anna Karenine.
Pourtant, apre`s la n de l ecriture de Guerre et Paix,
une depression grave a dechire son existence. Cette
de pression a` caracte`re melancolique a failli le briser
et l a amene, apre`s avoir acheve Anna Karenine, a`
vouloir renoncer non seulement a` la sexualite, mais
aussi a` la creation litteraire et a` la possession de ses
biens. Interrogeant la vie et l oeuvre de Tolsto,
l auteur tente de de couvrir le cheminement souterrain de cette depression qui va emerger brutalement
au milieu de sa vie, et de comprendre le tarissement
de son ge nie createur. Comme Leonard de Vinci,
Tolsto se detourne de son oeuvre artistique: il
declare que l art est une chose non sculement
inutile, mais meme nuisible , et va se consacrer a` des
ecrits philosophiques, politiques et religieux: sa
guerison passe par ces nouvelles sublimations.
R efer ences
Abraham, K. (1924). Les Etats maniacode pressifs et les etapes pregenitales de la
libido. In Oeuvres comple`tes. Paris: Payot,
1973, vol. II, p. 284.
Anargyros, A. (1999). Tolsto: la de chirure.
Lausanne: Delechaux and Niestle.
Freud, S. (1910). Leonardo da Vinci and a
Memory of his Childhood. S.E. 11.
(1918). The taboo of virginity. S.E. 11.
(1919). A child is being beaten. S.E. 17.
(1924). The economic problem of maso-
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ANNIE ANARGYROS-KLINGER
ANNIE ANARGYROS-KLINGER
2002
56 Boulevard Arago
75013 Paris
France
(Initial version received 18/7/00)
(Final version received 15/2/01)
Translated by Elaine Bolton