Image from the web
#01
One night in the autumn of 1862, Tolstoy had almost all night of insomnia, thinking of only one thing: tomorrow he would propose to Sophia. He loved this girl who was sixteen years younger and eighteen years younger than him, and felt that the happiness that was coming was unbelievable, so excited that he could not sleep.
The proposal went well. But on the day the proposal was accepted, he thought, "I can't keep a diary for myself." I felt, I believed, that soon I would no longer have secrets that belonged to one man, but to two men, and she would see everything I had written. ”
As he wrote this passage in his diary, he was clearly not sweet to the fact that someone would share his secret, but deeply disturbed that he would no longer be able to share the secret that belonged to him alone.
This uneasiness was fully confirmed after nine months, and became clear into a strong pain and remorse: "Where is the me that I like and know myself, the me who sometimes appears in its entirety, that makes me happy and makes me afraid, now?" I became a small and insignificant person. I've been such a person ever since I married the woman I love. Almost everything in this book is a lie —hypocrisy. The thought of her watching me write right behind me at the moment diminishes and destroys my authenticity. ”
#02
Tolstoy was not reluctant to tell the truth to his loved ones. But it is one thing to face the truth of others, it is another thing to face the truth of oneself, and the former cannot replace the latter. As a person who cherishes his inner life, he has developed the habit of keeping a diary since he was a child.
If we do not confuse notepads, memos, and the like with diaries, we should admit that diaries are the purest form of private writing, the hidden realm of one's spiritual life.
In a diary, a person faces only his own soul and speaks only to his own God. This is indeed a sacred date, and no one else is allowed to be present.
If you write a diary knowing that what you are writing will be seen by another person, then the invisible presence of this reader will inevitably change the writer's mentality, so that he consciously or unconsciously examines what he has written with the eyes of this reader.
As a result, the diary is no longer called a diary, the secret conversation with God degenerates into a confession and confession to others, and social relations shamelessly occupy the last spiritual chamber of the individual.
When a person is always confronted with others at any time, including in a diary, and is no longer able to face his own soul, no matter how honest he is in his family, in society, and in all relationships, he still loses the most fundamental truth, that is, the truth of facing himself.
#03
Therefore, it was impossible to keep a diary for himself alone, and this situation became a lasting illness in Tolstoy's married life.
Thirty-four years later, he still wrote bitterly in his diary: "The religious feelings that I had when I did not write diaries for others in the past are now gone." The thought of someone reading my diary and someone else watching it in the future destroys that feeling. And that feeling is precious and has helped me in life. ”
The "religious feelings" here refer to a spiritual life that belongs only to each person, for as he said in a letter to Sophia in the last year of his life: "The spiritual life of every man is a secret between this man and God, and no one should demand anything from it." ”
Of all the secrets of the world, only this kind of secret is the most sacred, and the revelation of other secrets often provides the truth of the matter, and the infringement of such secrets will stifle the truth of the soul.
Yet Tolstoy continued to keep a diary until the last days of his life, and it seemed to me that he remained very true in his diary, more true than any writer's diary I had ever read.
He unabashedly appealed to his anguish of not being able to write a diary truthfully, and proved his truth. Truth is the true color of his soul, and no force can make him give up, nor can he himself.
#04
A late autumn night in 1910, almost half a century before the autumn night when he was too happy to sleep for the marriage proposal, was another sleepless night for Tolstoy.
Late that night, the eighty-two-year-old man quietly got up, ran away from home, and ten days later fell ill and died at a small station called Astapovo.
Regarding Tolstoy's departure in his later years, there are many opinions about it.
The most common theory is that he tried to show his break with the aristocratic life, and of Madame Tolstoy, who refused to give it up, towards a self-sufficient labor life that was too late.
Therefore, he dedicated himself to the ideal of equality. In fact, however, the real reason for Tolstoy's departure was the one that disturbed him when he was newly married forty-eight years ago: the diary.
#05
If not being able to write a diary for oneself is a piece of Tolstoy's heart disease, then not being able to read her husband's diary is a piece of Sophia's heart disease, and the couple has launched a protracted war over the diary.
By Tolstoy's later years, the war had reached its climax.
In order to have a diary that he wrote only for himself, Tolstoy really went to great lengths and broke his mind. For a while, the world-famous literary hero had to hide his diary in the barrel of his boots, and even he thought it was funny. However, in the end, it was turned over by Sophia.
Sophia asked to see the rest of his diaries, but he refused to allow them and deposited his diaries for the last ten years in a bank. Sophia was crying constantly about this, and she couldn't figure out why the wife couldn't read her husband's diary, and there was only one explanation for this: there must have been bad things about her written there.
As she cried again, Tolstoy cried out:
"I handed over everything I had: possessions, works... I kept the diary to myself. If you still torture me, I will run away, I will run away! ”
How clear it is. Sophia had written it in her own diary, and she couldn't have fabricated something against her.
That night she secretly searched for Tolstoy's documents, and finally prompted Tolstoy to put his determination to flee into action.
It would be too snobbish to interpret the dispute over the diary as a struggle for inheritance rights. For Tolstoy, whose diary fell into his posthumous hands was a relatively minor matter, and what he fought for was the right to write a diary for himself.
The giant of public writing was also a martyr who died for the right to write privately.
The Tolstoy family
#pgc-card .pgc-card-href { text-decoration: none; outline: none; display: block; width: 100%; height: 100%; } #pgc-card .pgc-card-href:hover { text-decoration: none; } /*pc 样式*/ .pgc-card { box-sizing: border-box; height: 164px; border: 1px solid #e8e8e8; position: relative; padding: 20px 94px 12px 180px; overflow: hidden; } .pgc-card::after { content: " "; display: block; border-left: 1px solid #e8e8e8; height: 120px; position: absolute; right: 76px; top: 20px; } .pgc-cover { position: absolute; width: 162px; height: 162px; top: 0; left: 0; background-size: cover; } .pgc-content { overflow: hidden; position: relative; top: 50%; -webkit-transform: translateY(-50%); transform: translateY(-50%); } .pgc-content-title { font-size: 18px; color: #222; line-height: 1; font-weight: bold; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; } .pgc-content-desc { font-size: 14px; color: #444; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; padding-top: 9px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 1.2em; display: -webkit-inline-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 2; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; } .pgc-content-price { font-size: 22px; color: #f85959; padding-top: 18px; line-height: 1em; } .pgc-card-buy { width: 75px; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 50px; color: #406599; font-size: 14px; text-align: center; } .pgc-buy-text { padding-top: 10px; } .pgc-icon-buy { height: 23px; width: 20px; display: inline-block; background: url(https://lf1-cdn-tos.bytescm.com/obj/cdn-static-resource/pgc/v2/pgc_tpl/static/image/commodity_buy_f2b4d1a.png); }
【Spike】Tolstoy Confession ¥14.9 Purchase