Most fans of literature associate Leo Tolstoy with his almost universally identifiable War and Peace and regard him as one of the greatest authors of the modern era. One of Tolstoy’s later works, however, The Kreutzer Sonata, had been cast far out of the spotlight for what was, at the time, perceived to be a radical, almost crazed presentation of sexual abstinence and jealous fury-a presentation that illuminated the rather silent marital distress between Tolstoy and his wife.
Recently, Michael Katz, the C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and Eastern European Studies added his own name to the list of those interested in this curious, mysterious aspect of Tolstoy’s life. In an unprecedented exploration of the other half of the story behind Tolstoy’s 1889 Kreutzer Sonata, Katz has translated into English the previously neglected counter-stories written in direct response to Tolstoy’s novella.
Presented from the point of view of a middle-aged man who, in a rage of jealousy and disgust of his teenage wife, murders her, The Kreutzer Sonata is taken to present Tolstoy’s own views about sexual abstinence and marriage.
Katz’s journey began at a conference he went to at Tolstoy’s estate just outside of Moscow. There he heard about two unpublished stories written by Tolstoy’s wife, Sophie, and was instantly intrigued.
“She thought that her own marriage was being described by The Kreutzer Sonata, or rather that everyone who read it would think so,” Katz said.
Her fears were not unfounded: she was half of Tolstoy’s age when she married him, and other parallels between Tolstoy’s characters and his own friends and family existed. So she wrote her own variation of her husband’s novella, following its structure with a wife who, half the age of her husband, is murdered by him.
In the manuscript of Sophia’s first story, Whose Fault?, located in the archives in Moscow, Sophia wrote in the margins quotations from her husband’s story that she was simultaneously disagreeing with in the text itself. In response to his mother, Tolstoy’s son then wrote his own version of the original story, in effect polemicizing both his mother and father.
Katz first translated Sophia’s two stories and then Tolstoy’s son’s story.
“I didn’t know I was going to translate the original Kreutzer Sonata when I started, but it was terrific to struggle with a text by Leo Tolstoy, a text that was famous, controversial, and provocative. That was the last one that I did-I saved up,” Katz said.
He also stressed the interconnectedness of the Tolstoy family’s stories.
“My argument is that all of these stories are in dialogue; the wife and the son are replying to the things that the father says,” he said.
The preliminary title for Katz’s translation, therefore, is “The Tolstoy Family Story Contest”.
“The publisher didn’t think that was very funny,” Katz said.
Other Russian scholars have translated Tolstoy’s original story before, but Katz was the first to undertake the wife’s and son’s stories.
“It was very exciting. It was the first project I did after retirement, and this was a wonderful way to start that,” Katz said. “It gave me the opportunity to go to Russia twice. And the support-for a research assistant, for going to conferences, for buying books that I needed in order to conduct the research-the College gave me a great deal of support.”
Katz was also nominated by the College to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and received a Mellon Emeritus Fellowship to support his work, allowing him to travel to Russia and research in archives and museums. Part of the fellowship is also financing Katz’s attendance at a conference in Russia in which he will present his findings throughout the process to his colleagues there. The response from Katz’s colleagues so far, he says, has been excellent.
When asked what he thought was the most significant aspect of The Kreutzer Sonata is, he stressed the dissent of Tolstoy’s wife.
“I think it establishes Sophia Tolstoy as a figure in her own right. She writes well-she’s not a great writer like Tolstoy himself or like Dostoevsky-but she’s clear, she has her own ideas, she defends the right of a woman to seek happiness within a marriage and not just be an instrument of man’s sexual desire. She’s taking on a big fish; you don’t disagree with Tolstoy-easily, at least. He was by then probably the world’s best-known writer. He was an incredible figure. And she takes him on.”
