silhouettes in Childhood and Boyhood, there are few women in the earlier works of Tolstoy, or they remain of secondary importance. Woman appears in Family Happiness, written under the influence of his love for Sophie Bers. In the works which follow there are numerous types of young girls and women, full of intensest life, and even superior to the male types. One likes to think not only that Countess Tolstoy served her husband as the model for Natasha in War and Peace[1] and for Kitty in Anna Karenin,[2] but that she was enabled, by means of her confidences and her own vision, to become his discreet and valuable collaborator. Certain pages of Anna Karenin in particular seem to me to reveal a woman’s touch.
Thanks to the advantages of this union, Tolstoy enjoyed for a space of twelve or fourteen years a peace and security which had been long unknown to him.[3] He was able, sheltered by love, to dream
- ↑ Her sister Tatiana, intelligent and artistic, whose wit and musical talent were greatly admired by Tolstoy, also served him as a model. Tolstoy used to say, “I took Tania [Tatiana]; I beat her up with Sonia [Sophie Bers, Countess Tolstoy], and out came Natasha” (cited by P. Birukov).
- ↑ The installation of Dolly in the tumble-down country house; Dolly and the children; a number of details of dress and toilet; without speaking of certain secrets of the feminine mind, which even the intuition of a man of genius might perhaps have failed to penetrate, if a woman had not betrayed them to him.
- ↑ Here is a characteristic instance of Tolstoy’s enslavement by his creative genius: his Journal is interrupted for thirteen years, from November 1, 1865, when the composition of War and Peace was in full swing. The egoism of the artist has
